Fly on the E-Commerce Cyberwall

Business Lessons from My Daughter’s Graduation—What You Do for Others
It’s humbling when your children surpass you. One of the events my wife, son and I attended at my daughter Becca’s graduation from Virginia Military Institute was an awards ceremony she said we really didn’t need to attend.

“I think I’m getting an award,” she said, “but it’s no big deal. It’s just a little research award for the project I did last year. Everybody who does a research project gets one.” She made it seem like a glorified term paper.

Despite Becca downplaying the award, we went to the ceremony. I mean, why travel halfway across the country for your kid and then miss seeing her get an award?

This was no let’s-give-everyone-an-award-to-boost-their-self-esteem type of award ceremony, though. Most of the awards went to faculty members for significant accomplishments in research or mentoring. Out of the entire ceremony, only five awards went to students.

My jaw dropped when they announced her award and described her project. She had developed statistical models for assessing patients. This system could more accurately predict a successful course of treatment for mental health patients. The professor presenting the award went on to say that Becca’s evaluation system was being adopted by mental health facilities along the entire East Coast. Glorified term paper indeed!

It’s humbling to see your child surpass you in achievements. At her age, I was making a hurried application to grad school—more to extend my time in the familiar environment of college than to improve my value in the work world. Her, she’s finding ways for mental health professionals to treat their patients more successfully.

But as humbling as it is, it’s far more gratifying. Seeing your child achieve, you can’t help but feel you’ve done something right. And in giving them an environment where they could follow their dreams and excel in them, I feel like my wife, Joanne, and I have added far more to the world than by anything else we could have done.

Don’t get me wrong; I don’t claim we’ve been perfect parents. I, especially, have messed up far more than I would have liked. But somehow we’ve helped our six kids turn out very well.
This brings me to the business lesson in this brag session: focus on what you leave behind in your business more than on what you can get out of it. You’ll accomplish a lot more than you ever imagined you would.

Joanne and I could have focused on raising our children to make us look good. We could have pushed them to fulfill our dreams. Or we could have smothered them with protection and never let them venture beyond the safety of what was familiar to us. In any of those ways, we probably would have messed them up big-time.

But we chose to let each of them develop their own dreams and take their own risks. As a result, all six of our children face life with passion and curiosity. And they excel in ways that constantly surprise us.

In the same way, you can go into business to make a buck for yourself. You can use your business to rip people off by giving them as little for their money as you can get away with. You can choose to offer safe, generic products in the hope that vast numbers of people will buy without you having to put any effort into trying to solve their needs.

Or you can focus on helping specific groups of people to find solutions to their problems. You can find people who have a passion and help them develop that passion with the solutions you provide. And just like Joanne and I, you’ll be surprised not only to succeed, but with how much more far-reaching of success you’ve accomplished.