Issue #150 Why Finding the Right Person is Important, But Becoming the Right Person is Essential

There are seasons in life when the future requires something new of us.

At the time, we rarely recognize the significance of those moments. We simply know that what brought us here will no longer be enough to take us where we hope to go. Looking back, however, those seasons often become the defining chapters of our lives, not because of what happened around us, but because of what changed within us.

For me, one of those seasons arrived in early 2006.

By then I had spent over a decade building our first toy company. We had experienced years of growth, been honoured with numerous industry awards and established ourselves as one of Canada’s leading toy companies. It had been an exciting journey with several near death experiences that had somehow always worked out, and in many ways I felt invincible.

Then, almost without warning, everything changed.

Following a record year of growth, we encountered a series of challenges we never anticipated and, quite frankly, were not equipped to navigate. Over the next two years we struggled to try and save the company by going through a restructuring, getting additional investor capital and doing everything we knew to keep it alive. 

Despite our best efforts we came to the harsh reality that the business wasn’t going to survive.

Over my years as an entrepreneur, I have seen that it is not uncommon for business owners to arrive at a similar inflection point. There comes a moment when your initial business model is tested and you discover the actual metrics do not align with your thesis. At that pivotal moment, as a founder, one must decide whether to persist, pivot or finally put a bullet in something you have poured your life into. 

After exhausting every reasonable option, we chose the third.

As painful as that season was, I was determined not to let my dreams die with it. If the business was ending, I wanted to believe the lessons didn’t have to be lost. Somewhere in the middle of that disappointment, I became convinced that we should start again and build something even better.

Our timing, however, couldn’t have been worse.

Lehman Brothers had just collapsed. The global financial system was beginning to unravel and businesses around the world were retreating, reducing risk and simply trying to survive what would become the largest economic recession since the Great Depression.

From the outside, it seemed like the worst possible time to start a new venture.

Yet that is exactly what we decided to do.

Looking back now, I sometimes smile at how naïve we must have appeared. We had just watched a business fail after years of investment, sacrifice and effort. Conventional wisdom suggested we should step back, regroup and wait for conditions to improve.

Instead, we chose to start again.

What I didn’t appreciate then was that my greatest challenge wasn’t going to be designing a better business model.  It was becoming the kind of leader capable of building it.

Our previous company had been built around distributing other people’s brands within Canada. In the new business, we would no longer simply represent someone else’s ideas; we would have to create and market ideas of our own. The business itself wasn’t the only thing changing; I was being invited to become a different kind of entrepreneur.

Everything that had helped us to achieve in that initial season, now needed to evolve for the next. 

The opportunity wasn’t simply asking us to build something new; it was asking us to become someone new.

At the time, I assumed it was simply another lesson from the school of hard knocks about entrepreneurship. Now I have come to believe it is a universal principle, that every meaningful opportunity eventually asks the same question.

Not, what or how are you going to build?

But rather, Who do you need to become?

Becoming the Person

Becoming someone different to take on new opportunities has certainly been true in my business career but the question is does it stop there?  

In my experience the answer is No.

It is a universal principle that applies to all areas of life.

One of the more uncomfortable realizations of my adult life is that I spent years expecting my marriage to adapt to the person I was becoming professionally rather than asking whether the person I was becoming professionally was actually good for my marriage.

If I am honest, simply writing that sentence still stings.

Not because I lacked commitment, nor because I stopped loving my wife. Rather, because I unconsciously allowed achievement to shape my identity in ways I never intended.

The discipline that helped me build businesses also made me more driven, more impatient and more inclined to solve problems than simply sit with them. I became increasingly focused on outcomes, efficiency and execution. While those qualities served me well in business, they did not always serve my marriage.

My wife didn’t need a better CEO.

She needed a better husband.

Eventually I came to realize that my marriage wasn’t asking me to accomplish more; it was asking me to become someone different.

Somewhere deep down, I think I always knew that was true. Yet I became remarkably skilled at justifying my actions. I told myself I was building security for our family. I believed this season demanded extraordinary effort and that once I reached the next milestone, the next level of financial freedom or the next measure of achievement, I would finally have the margin to invest more fully in my relationships.

My intentions were sincere.

My timing was flawed.

Without realizing it, I had quietly adopted a someday plan. I kept postponing the very transformation my marriage was inviting me to make. I assumed I could become the husband I wanted to be later, once I had become the entrepreneur I believed I needed to be first.

The problem is that life doesn’t work that way.

There is no stasis.

In every area of life we are either progressing or we are drifting.

Intention or Atrophy

There is a condition that begins affecting many of us as we age called sarcopenia. After about the age of forty, we naturally begin losing muscle mass and bone density. Left unattended, the body slowly becomes weaker. The only way to slow or reverse that decline is through continual, intentional resistance training.

That principle is true for our physical health, and it is equally true of our relationships.

None of us accidentally develops greater depth of character or deeper intimacy. Both are cultivated through deliberate practice and repeated choices. Left to chance they eventually become weak, brittle and prone to break.

That realization over the years has fundamentally changed how I show up in my marriage and as a result, the questions I regularly ask of myself have also changed.

Am I becoming more patient?

More generous?

More curious?

More forgiving?

More present?

And more importantly…

Am I becoming the husband that my wife deserves?

Three decades ago, when we stood together on our wedding day and said, “I do,” I initially viewed it as a moment of achievement. I had found the beautiful girl, she had said yes and, in my mind, I had reached another meaningful milestone.

Looking back now, I realize we were simply reaching the end of the beginning.

Marriage was never the destination.

It was the beginning of a journey that would ask far more of me than I could have ever imagined.

Not simply to love my wife better.

But to become someone capable of loving her more deeply.

While I still believe finding the right person is one of life’s most significant decisions, I no longer believe it is the most difficult part of marriage. The greater challenge has been allowing the relationship itself to shape us.

I spent years trying to shape my marriage around my ambitions.

Instead I have learned that marriage was designed to help shape me.

To expose my impatience.

To soften my pride.

To reveal my selfishness.

To teach me generosity.

To invite me toward greater humility, deeper friendship and a love that is less about what I receive and more about what I choose to give.

None of that happened on our wedding day. It has happened slowly, almost imperceptibly, through thousands of ordinary days, a handful of extraordinary ones and countless conversations along the way.

I don’t think the greatest gift of marriage has been finding someone to spend my life with.

It has been discovering the person that loving her has invited me to become.

Reflect & Align

We launched our new business in 2009, embracing the opportunity to begin again. One of the greatest gifts of that journey is that Kelly has been far more than my life partner; she has also been my business partner. Together we have shared remarkable adventures around the world, including the moment pictured above, taken at a toy trade show with one of our children’s favourite Sesame Street characters.

When I look back over the defining seasons of my life, I no longer see them primarily through the businesses we built, the opportunities we pursued or even the milestones we achieved.

I see them through a different lens.

Each season was quietly asking the same question.

Who are you becoming?

When our first business failed and we decided to start a new venture, I initially believed the challenge before us was to build another company.  I now realize the greater challenge was becoming the kind of entrepreneur capable of building something new.

Marriage has taught me the very same lesson.

For years, I believed the challenge was finding the right person. I have come to realize that was only the beginning. The greater challenge has been allowing the relationship itself to shape me into a better husband, a better friend and, ultimately, a better man in all areas of my life.

I believe that is true of every meaningful opportunity we are given.

The opportunity matters.

The dream matters.

The relationship matters.

But sooner or later, each one begins asking something far more important than what we hope to accomplish. It asks who we are becoming as a result of the opportunity.

As you reflect this week, perhaps these questions are worth considering:

• Where in my life am I still living with a someday plan?
• What opportunity or relationship is inviting me to become someone different?
• Am I investing as much energy into becoming the right person as I am into pursuing the right opportunities?

The older I get, the more convinced I become that the deepest fulfilment in life is not found in what we achieve. It is found in who we become through the process of achieving it.

Finding my wife and choosing her has been the best decision of my life. Becoming the husband she deserves is the journey that decision began.

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