My Mentors

On Sunday morning I was in church listening to a fantastic lesson on letting God relieve our anxiety. While the lesson was very edifying and encouraging, I admittedly spent a brief time letting my mind wander. Now, before you report me to God, I want to let you know that I really began to think about the speaker delivering the message.

He's one of my mentors.

I've come to know Roy since he joined our congregation a few years ago. Since then, he and his lovely wife have served as an excellent role models for us. As a matter of fact, he's one of my top five favorite speakers.

Having mentors is incredibly important no matter where you are in life and its important to have different mentors for different aspects of your life.

In my spiritual life, I have older people that I look up to and try to duplicate the things they do well. Some of the go to church with me, some don't. Some I see each Sunday and some I don't see in person for years at a time. But in either case, I have the ability to ask them questions and benefit from their wealth of information and experiences.

In my professional life, I have many different mentors. Some are ex-employers, some are colleagues and some are simply men and women that are successful and their success translates between industries. As a matter of fact, that is one reason why I'm a member of my local Lions Club. I joined my club because it is full of people that are older than me and are doing well professionally. They freely give me advice and set a positive example for me.

Believe it or not, I have some mentors that I've never met in person! I am mentored by the writing of Dave Ramsey, John Maxwell, Michael Hyatt, Dr. Meg Meeker, Jon Acuff, Patrick Lencioni, Dan Cathy, and others. I don't have to have conversations with these folks to be mentored by them. I can take their published work via book, blog, video, etc, and learn valuable lessons from them.

The reason that I have mentors and the reason that mentors are so important to me are:

1. I have a lot to learn. And so do you. That being true, if someone can offer me positive advice--who am I to turn it down? Obviously I am careful about who I take advice from but when someone that is winning tells me how they are winning, I will listen.

2. A mentor's scars are my lighthouses. I would prefer not to get beaten up by life. If I want to avoid being beaten up and crashing into jagged rocks, I'd better look for lighthouses. Good mentors will share their negative experiences along with their positive experiences. By taking heed of spiritual or professional pitfalls, you can avoid some pain.

3. I fail. Not all the time but occasionally, I fail at something or at the very least I get discouraged. One thing mentors will do is help pick you back up and encourage you as you recover from failure. When they tell me that it will be okay, you have to believe them because they're credible! They know that I will be okay because they have failed before too and they're okay.

Mentors are such a key part of my life and if they aren't part of yours, you should seek out ways to add these types of people into your life.

Income Inequality & Sulphur Springs

I think that Sulphur Springs is a pleasant little town.

We have rich folks. We have poor folks. We have a lot of people that live somewhere between those two extremes. On the news we hear (and especially ahead of the annual State of the Union speech) about the income inequality in America. 

If you haven't heard a lot about this, here's an article from USA Today: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/01/23/pew-poll-obama-wealth-gap-sotu/4777385/

Of course, whenever you broach the subject of income, people on both sides of the debate have strong opinions. To simplify the issue for my tiny brain, it seems like the issue is:

     Should the government intervene by funneling more dollars to human services programs and/or    become more lenient on eligibility criteria for those programs, thereby increasing the number of households receiving federal/state subsidies?

     If the answer to that is yes, should the wealthy people in America be forced to pay more taxes to help fund these programs?

I'm confident that the issues are more diverse than that, but from what I've read and heard, that seems to be one of the core issues.  Should the government take more money from our richest citizens and redistribute it to our poorest citizens?

Coming from the director of a non-profit, human services agency, who literally gets paid to help people in need--I say 'No.'  I say 'No' to both parts of that question.

It is my opinion that when you take money from the rich and give it to the poor, you are doing two things:  1) You are forcing the people that have the most economic value to give their money to the government (which is well known for its trillion dollar budget deficit) so that they can fund the people that create the least economic value; and 2) You are enabling a culture of entitlement among the poor.

If the government MUST be involved, then instead of creating entitlement programs, why not fund grants (not loans) to small businesses?

I worked at a small metal art company in Clyde, Texas for a while. We were a business of 3 that manufactured and sold merchandise across the country.  That company was, and still is, at a point that because they lack capital, they cannot expand the business to increase their annual revenue.  If we had been given a grant (not a loan) from the government, do you know what the first thing we would have done was? 

Hire people.

As many of them as the grant allowed.

Immediately.

A small company in Clyde, Texas would have literally pulled people out of the unemployment line, food stamp line, etc. and restored their dignity and put them back to work. 

I currently run a small business.  We have so many customers that we don't really market our services that much because there's more work than we can currently handle. If our current grant was increased for the purpose of hiring more staff, do you know what I would do?

Hire people.

As many of them as the grant allows.

Immediately.

A small non profit company in Sulphur Springs, Texas would literally pull people out of the unemployment line, food stamp line, etc. and restore their dignity and put them back to work.

If the government is going to get involved in closing the income inequality gap, they need to shift their focus on taking money from the rich and handing it to the poor and focus on supporting the employers in America and letting private industry work.

Tattoos in A Small Town

So there I was....sitting at home after work one night this week watching an awesome combination of Pawn Stars and Duck Dynasty laughed at a ridiculous post on Facebook.

Some girl, we'll call her 'Random Girl,' posted on a local public Facebook forum with something along the following lines of foolish:

     "Does anyone know of a place in this town that will hire someone with tattoos and piercings? I can't find a job and I'm thinking its time to leave this small discriminating town to look for work."

I just had to read some of the comments for that post. Most of them were sensible naming off tons of local businesses that employed folks with tattoos and piercings and others pointed out that even in a small town, most businesses don't mind tats and the ones that do simply ask that they be covered while you're working. Sensible comments, I thought.

But the best one was from Random Girl. She had to chime back in with a line stating, "I asked for job opportunities, not lectures."

Brilliant!

I had to laugh and click on Random Girl's profile to see just how crazy her tattoos were. Turns out, from the pictures that she's posted and not bothered to make private, her tattoos are hardly noticeable.

What is noticeable is the poses and the lack of modest clothing.

Did I mention that she didn't bother to make any of this private?

As and employer of a small business in a small town, let me be so bold as to speak for the majority of my colleagues here--we don't care nearly as much about your tattoos and piercings as we do about your ability to exercise good judgment and your ability to accept responsibility for your own actions.

Good judgment--Before you claim that you're being discriminated against (which employers take VERY seriously) make sure that you exercise good judgment. Don't post anything online that you would be embarrassed to see posted on the bulletin board at church or in a employee break room. Employers can and do research you online if you are a candidate for a job. Posting negative comments and immodest pictures show employers that you don't take yourself or others seriously and you don't exercise good judgment.

Accept responsibility--Before you blame employers for your unemployment, consider your own actions and take responsibility. If you want tattoos to express yourself and your individuality, that's cool with me but before you get the permanent ink, consider that you can be limiting your employability if you can't or are unwilling to cover it up. If that's a risk you're prepared to take, then more power to you. If you're not willing to take that risk, don't get the ink. Accept responsibility for your actions.

I've employed people with tattoos and piercings on their face. I don't care. What I don't hire are people that don't exercise good judgment and don't accept responsibility for their decisions.

With that, Random Girl, good luck in the a big town. $20 bucks says you'll find the same attitude with employers there as you did here in Sulphur Springs.