One Person Can Make a Difference

This week for my "Introduction to Entrepreneurship" class I had to write about an interview I did with an entrepreneur.  The person that I chose to write about was my old boss.  Before I moved to Texas, I had the privilege for working for someone that I truly admire as his Executive Assistant.  During my time working for this man, I was able to become mentored by him.  He taught me many things, including how to make sure that my priorities are in order.  I learned through him that if you make sure that you truly care about people, you can change lives.
Writing about my old boss helped me to reflect on the many lessons I learned from him while I worked for him.  My boss loved being an entrepreneur for many reasons, one of the biggest reasons that he loved it so much was because he knew that he was allowing people to support their own families.  My boss truly cared about each and every person who worked for him.  I watched as my boss would give money to our employees as he would find out that they needed it to pay bills.  I watched him purchase cars for employees who needed a way to get their children to school.  My favorite time was Christmas time because my boss and his wife would go around to every employee and personally deliver a Christmas card to them and tell each employee what they meant to them.  I had never known an employer to care so much about his employees.
My old boss truly wanted people to succeed in those things that they are good at.  He has taken teenagers who end up working for him for a long time, mentored them and then helped them to buy dry cleaning companies of their own.  Through all of this, even though there have been stressful times for my boss, I watched as he approached all of his life with this same attitude.  I watched as he taught me, by example, how to change people's lives.
Interviewing my old boss reminded me of an antidote that I once read about an old man who comes across a little boy on a beach full of beached starfish.  This old man watched as the little boy would pick up a starfish, one by one, and throw them into the ocean.  The old man asks the boy, "Why are you throwing these starfish back into the ocean?  You can't possibly save them all.  You aren't going to make a difference."  The boy then picks up a starfish, tosses it into the ocean and says, "I made all the difference in the world to that one."  My boss, has the same mentality of the boy.  He may not be changing the world through his dry cleaning business, but he is changing lives by truly caring about everyone he comes into contact with.
So, what did I learn from this experience?  I learned that I need to make sure that my motivations are pure and that I make sure that I treat everyone as though they are someone who is important.  I have learned that as I align my will to the will of God, that I will find happiness.  I believe that happiness is the greatest form of success.  My business ventures may not bring me large mountains of money, but if I can change lives, and if I can find happiness in what I am doing, I will have succeeded.