Several years ago, my mom received a 2-dollar bill as change from a grocery store and gave it to me. I was amazed, I didn’t know 2-dollar bills existed. It seemed like a rare treasure that no one on the planet had, except me.
I put it in my wallet way back then and never spent it because well, “why would you spend the only $2 bill in the whole world?” I loved that 2-dollar bill.
Years would go by, I went to college and then jumped directly into an entrepreneurial life. As most entrepreneurs learn, there are some tough times when you start a new business or avoid the “safety” of a 9-5 job. I’m just not one those people cut out for any sort of traditional job. Perhaps, it’s my poor ability to take direction from others, the fact that I hate having to go or be at the same place every day, or maybe I’m just too focused on creating my own path, I don’t know.
The point is, when I first started my own businesses (and several times after that), I had No MONEY. When I say no money, I mean NO money. I had some of those times where I didn’t even have an idea of where the next check would come from and had bills coming up like yesterday. I remember sitting on the floor in my bedroom just staring at the wall thinking, “Good Job Baylor, you’ve royally screwed up again.”
And I sat there. And cried. And Stressed out. And worried myself sick. I didn’t have a dollar to my name, but one thing I did have was $2 to my name because I never spent that 2-dollar bill that my mom gave me all those years before.
Over the ups and many downs of those early entrepreneurial years, I became great friends with that $2. It helped me change my perspective on life. Sitting on my floor one day, wallowing in all my misery, (let’s get rid of the notion that I’ve always just been an uber positive person who always saw the glass half full. There were days when it seemed I couldn’t even afford the glass to fill up nor did I have the time to figure out if it was half full or half empty,) I pulled out that wrinkled $2 and laughed. Not a little laugh, it was one of those I’m laughing even harder through these tears because I was laughing at the biggest joke in the room – me.
Not in a self-depreciating way, I laughed because it was ME that put ME in this position. I laughed that I had been pissed at everyone else – clients for not paying, new customers for not biting on my marketing campaigns, my longtime girlfriend for leaving me and whoever else I could the blame.
But my source of strength that day came from that $2. It hit me that as long as I had that 2-dollar bill in my wallet, I would never be down to my last dollar.
That simple concept gave me hope, it gave me strength, and it allowed me to get wipe away the tears, quit making excuses, and get off the floor and go make something of myself.
Sometimes the blessing or the motivation we need to succeed has been with us the whole time. We must stop the pity party and blame games and look around us.
Often, we’re sitting on blessings, What’s in your wallet?
You know what’s always in mine – my 2 Dollar Bill.
