You see this dad has significant net worth.  He’s not bashful about sharing that fact and that is not a problem at all. However, it is how that wealth affected his desires for his son that sparked my intrigue. You see, he mentioned many times during the course of the conversation that money is not an issue for him, and that money he would ensure that  finances would never be a concern for his adult son. However, during the course of our meeting, the conversation turned to the future and someone on our team stepped in the proverbial "it!" He had the audacity let the word “success” slip through their lips (now the objective of our session, after all, is to help business owners and CEO’s realize the success they envision for their business endeavor – so the word is bound to arise at least once in each of our sessions).

Upon hearing the utterance of the word “success,” this gentleman visibly recoiled into a offended posture, sported a bit of a scowl on his face, glared at my colleague and cut him off mid sentence to say, “I don’t care if my son is successful or not.” That was it.  Right there. I remembered where the first "r" in r3Success came from to "reThink Success."

To this man, he was making a righteous, bold statement about his purest desire for his son’s happiness – I know what he meant, and where his heart was. But at face value, his words sounded absolutely ridiculous. To him and many people like him, the word success might as well be a cuss word, banned from conversational usage of all upstanding, respectable, and especially accomplished citizens. That awful word success – the word that money hungry, dollar motivated, slick talking, fancy clothes wearing, schmoozey cheesy-types aspire to be. Up to this point in the session, my two colleagues had taken the lead, however, it was here, that I couldn’t hold back. I've become more seasoned at navigating and influencing this type of mindset, but at the time it took great willpower to resist the natural rush and instinct to jump into lecture mode as adrenalin shot through my veins. I realize of course, this is simply a misunderstanding of vocabulary – an all too common misunderstanding of the word that I believe to be the desire of every human, at our core, as created beings.  So it is here, in writing, that I share with future clients, current clients, and colleagues, how the word success is understood and used by our organization.

In the most basic of forms, we believe success is achieving your desire. The word, therefore, is a word practically without meaning until it is personalized by each individual.  In fact, WordBook defines Success as “an event that accomplishes its intended purpose.”  For the word to have any meaning at all, then, it must first become intensely personal.  It is a fluid process of realizing a goal and either intently or passively achieving that goal through trial, error, perseverance, courage, failure and ultimately success.

So, with all due respect to those offended by the word success, I want nothing more for my son than for him to earn his own success, no matter how much wealth I have been blessed to acquire or don’t have. For him to set his passion on the future and then experience the sense of accomplishment from achieving his goals in any portion – is to be alive, to be successful. That is a desire I not only have for my son, but for each and every individual. And I am remarkably blessed to help each of our clients achieve their own success – as they define it.

So here’s to you…. and your very own success.