“You ruined in my life. After working with you for 5 years, we went out of business and now I have nothing. I will not forgive you!”
That message hurt me.
Not because it was true but because for 5 years, we helped this person build their business as much as we were able to, with a few hundred a month.
For 5 years this person lived off a company that had poor customer service, poor pricing and outdated technology. They were not willing to change and invest in better technology and the industry kept changing. Eventually it caught up with them and they could not afford to keep their doors open.
Most of the 1100 clients that we serviced in the past 7 years were small businesses. I wish they were all able to make the investment, for us to bring 6 business strategists into their office and do a workshop, to show them exactly what they need to change in their business to 10x their bottom line while still growing their top line.
To help them understand how to properly grow themselves, their team, their culture and understand that digital marketing is just a small part of growing your business.
Instead of taking responsibility and embracing the change in marketing, the change in sales, the change in their customer’s mindset. This person choses blame and is full of resentment.
There are too many people in this world that are angry about the past. They cannot forgive and move forward. They wish that things were not the way that they were. They wish that things were easier.
Don’t wish it was easier, wish that you were better! – Jim Rohn – Watch This..
It’s easier to blame the government. It’s easier to blame the economy. It’s easier to blame your parents. It’s easier to blame your community, your education, your life… It’s so easy to blame your vendors.
Its very hard to blame yourself. Its very hard to take responsibility.
If you are still angry about an incident in the past, its because you still have not learned something from that incident in the past.
If you are worried about the future, its because you do not have a good plan for the future. A solid plan that you are confident in.
When you forgive someone, you are not doing them a favor, you are helping yourself move forward into the next chapter of your life.
Choose responsibility instead of blame. Choose peace and love instead of anger and resentment. Learn something from the past and forgive those, who have wronged you. No matter how wrong they are.
Learn and move forward. Lest you pay the price again and again, till you finally learn the hard way or die unhappy.
You cannot change someone who is not aware of their bad habits and is constantly blaming and shaming people around them.
What you can do is forgive them and hope that they wake up from their bad dream.
Our life is only a dream, we change the story when we realize, we have the power to do change it by changing our thoughts with love.
Let’s choose to live our ideal dream together and enjoy peace, love and prosperity.
Joe Apfelbaum
PS: We recently won an award for being the King of Kings county in Brooklyn NY. For the past 7 years we have been servicing the community and we have positively impacted over 10,000 businesses with our thought leadership and business advice. We created hundreds of jobs and made this world a better place.
I am proud to accept this award and I am happy I was able to celebrate it with our award winning team. A past client came over to me at the event and told me that we earned this award because he was with us for 5 years and he never worked with a better, more amazing company. That made me smile, because I knew it was true and because I knew it’s really about our people.
PPS: Jeffrey Gitomer is the king of sales and I had the honor and privilege to have him on CEO Mojo! Listen to the episode of the podcast here. I was also featured on his podcast Sell or Die..
