Truth

I pray that you have a person like Bryan in your life. He is one of my closest friends. He’s the guy I can tell everything to. When my youngest son was born dead, and later revived, he and his wife were the first people my wife and I decompressed with.

I remember the morning he told me he was an alcoholic, and had been fighting it longer than I was even aware of. He trusted me enough to know that my love for him was not based on who I thought he was, but who I knew him to be.

We have had so many great conversations, ranging from politics to kids to the funniest things we ever saw. My favorite memories were meeting him out at our favorite cigar shop and just….talking. And laughing. I have burned at least a half dozen shirts or pants from guffaws, yes literally guffaws, where I dropped my cigar and tried to light myself on fire.

Now, don’t worry, Bryan is still with us, don’t get maudlin. Uncle Bryan and Aunt Courtney are still a part of our lives, and my kids literally call them that, because they have never not known them. We loaded up and went to Portugal last year to visit, and yes, five stars.

What I wanted to share with you was part of the conversation we recently had. We were talking about my goals, concerns, and hopes for my business. Bryan is a great business coach, and let’s be honest, an even better life coach.

I hope you have a friend who can listen to what you say and then help you hear it. I know that sentence looks weird, but I meant it just like I wrote it.

We started talking about my concerns, my fears. He queried if there was something about the process that unsettled me. I started talking, and just with a nod of his head on FaceTime he got me to admit something I had never said out loud.

I am afraid of money.

It is important to know that I grew up poor. We looked up longingly at the poverty line. I was raised by a single mother who made $250 a month. Not a week. A month.

I am always amazed by how many people can beat my story, growing up with even less.

GST Media is the name of my company. We have been growing at a very impressive rate, but have I replaced my salary from KRTY? No, I haven’t. Is it possible? Yes, it is, and maybe even inevitable. But growing pains are a part of any endeavor, and we certainly have had ours.

My lovely wife has been my de facto Chief Financial Officer for the last few years, but her real job is in the high tech world, and I’m very grateful for it. It’s also a high-pressure all-encompassing responsibility at which she is very adroit. But it has become too much, and Bryan said to me, hey, it’s your company, you should be in charge of it.

It’s amazing how you really can be blind to the obvious, at least for me. Yes, I dang sure should, so I had a meeting and told my team that the buck stops here, and I’ll be handling it from now on, and I’d appreciate your help in teaching me what I may not know. Which is a lot.

It is exciting, and also a huge plate of anxiety, and I have two forks. Stress has become part of my daily routine and I find myself struggling some days just to calm down.

This is when Bryan asked me why? That’s when I admitted to myself that I was afraid of money, I always have been. I have never longed to be wealthy, just able to provide for my family and pay my bills.

I have apologized to my wife for not making enough money, and have derided myself for not living up to a self-imposed standard. I remember the times early in my career when I would have $21 dollars that I had to stretch out over two weeks. I would lie awake at night trying to figure out how to get gas in the car and only drive to work. I would walk to the grocery store and buy just generic stuff and stretch it out.

As I said before, there are people I’ve heard from that would do the same thing but only have $8. And they had kids.

Bryan asked me if I could go back in time and talk to my 24 year old self, what would I say? At the time of our conversation I was sitting in my backyard of my amazing house, watching my dog walk around our pool, as my two sons were attending very good schools. It hit me that I would tell him thank you for all the sacrifices you are making, and I can tell you that you’ll never go hungry, and most importantly, your children won’t either. The dedication to your craft will pay off in ways you can’t imagine. That when I look back and see how far we have come, it’s even farther than you could look forward and imagine.

I have been blessed with a wife that when I shared my fears with her, looked at me and said “We are doing very well, you have done well, and you still are. God has blessed us, and He has taken such good care of you”. I don’t know if it’s even possible, but I fell in love with her even more.

Bryan works with a lot of people in Fortune 500 companies. His clients are some very wealthy and powerful people. And he looked at me and said “Gary, you wouldn’t believe how many of those people have the exact same fear as you”.

I can’t explain it, but I felt the weight of all my years literally lift off my shoulders.

Life is hard, it’s unpredictable, it’s chaotic, and yet it is so so good, and so so beautiful. We are all afraid, maybe it’s part of the human condition. Bryan encouraged me to share this with you, his thoughts were this could help others going through the same thing in life.

So that’s where I’m at. I try to keep these columns light-hearted and fun, and they will stay that way. But the idea that I might be able to help even one of you who might feel crushed by all those fears, well, that makes this worth it.

I try and control what I can. I work hard, I stay diligent, I try not to spend frivolously. I am taking responsibility for my fiscal life and not letting it take control of me. I’m reading the book Profit First, and finding a lot of things I can take and use.

And I will fight my fears by not going into “yeah, but what if?” in my internal conversations.

Please know that I am aware of folks who are going through much tougher times mentally than I am, and I truly do pray for you. I take even more comfort in what my mother used to say “this too shall pass”. Do your best to stay in this moment, to be grateful for what you have, and for what you have done. It’s more impressive than you probably give yourself credit for.

Thank you for being a part of my journey, and thank you so much for letting me be a part of yours.