The Cause Marketing King

Sometimes I find it amazing that friends, associates and even strangers can pick up on things about us that we haven't notice for years! Today I was at Bible study during Sunday school and I was giving my pastor the "Whoa is me" routine. He's the kind of pastor that always listens intuitively, but when he speaks, its as those he's all up in your "kool aid!"  He calls it divine intervention with a Biblical twist! Today I told the group about a traumatic experience I had while working on one of my first career paths (San Diego Gas & Electric), here in San Diego. Some people could see that I was still shaken up by the experience and that it was clearly stapled to the walls of my memory banks. (Heck, shutting off people for non-payment of Gas & Electric bills while running for my life was not how I planned to make my first million!)

However, the pastor paused slightly with reckless abandon, gazed right through me and with a stern pointing of his finger made the remark that I could have been wealthy by now if I had taken his advice sometime ago and wrote a book about the experience. The truth is he was right because I had started on the manuscript years ago and had plenty of "real live notes" from twenty-five years of being in the field . As I think back over today's incident in church I thanked God for having a pastor who can "read-me-like-a-book!"

The Cause Marketing King

This past weekend as I went through my normal ritual of "volunteerism" I encountered one of the hardest things I have ever done in my life-face someone that I knew was lying to me, eyeball to eyeball. The first instance came as I was co-hosting the 27th annual Dr. Martin Luther King breakfast at the Town & Country Hotel. I ran into someone I had just interviewed with for a position. He apologized to me for my not being picked for the position and then went on to ask me if I would be interested in working with him in another position that he was going to be campaigning for to seek nomination! All I could do was think to myself, if you didn't hire me the first time for the position I wanted (knowing I was fully qualified than the person you hired), then why would I want to go through the pain of two separate interviews (the first with his staff and the second, if I made it that far with him), all over again!!

The second incident came at the same place but with a different set of people who were on the interview team for another position and they personally knew me and my qualifications but I had received a turndown letter for the position. I later found out that they had politely cancelled the position and promoted from within. The sad part about this incident was that I had a passion for this particular non-profit organization, had volunteered for them before and really wanted to work for them.

As I later went on to several other events (Martin Luther King parade and another breakfast), I kept bumping into these same people and having to look into their faces knowing that they had hurt me personally by not letting me know upfront that they were not going to hire me gave me a distrust toward my fellow man.

Finally I came to my senses, let it go, and gave it all back to God! Now it's on to the next non-profit organization that can utilize my services.