Earl and the Magic Shoe Shop

Sometimes we just don’t know that we are up for a promotion. Things change around us and we get very fearful and distraught and immediately move into a sense of lack and survival. What we miss out on are the opportunities that the change is bringing forward and the new doors that are ready to open right in front of us.

Today after finishing a round of golf at Rancho Park in Los Angeles I had a gift of magic bestowed upon me by the Earl, the shoe repair guy. I’ve known Earl for 15 years, and for 13 of those years he had a shop right on the Rancho golf course in Los Angeles. He had a great customer base with total access to all the golfers that visited the course. Earl had a good, steady, loyal customer base. I would bring my shoes to him to repair and refurbish to look like new, while I played a round of golf.

In a blink of an eye, Earl’s world changed pretty drastically. Earl was leasing his space from the company, who ran the pro shop, but after 15 plus years the pro shop owner, who was on a month-to-month lease, loss his lease and Earl found himself in a quandary. The new owner assured Earl that there was a place from him and that his business would be okay.  Assurances and guarantees are sometimes misleading and a precursor to dramatic change.

After a year, Earl had to leave his prime location and found himself without a home. Some people liken change to death-it usually is immediate, with very little warning and irreversible. What happened next is magical. Earl discovered something. He discovered that while he had a good set up at the course, he actually was restricting the amount of business he could do by being tied down at the course.  Earl now has 4 cleaners that he contracts works with, a mobile van that goes from course to course to service customers who need shoe repairs, and he has tripled his income. His exposure continues to bring in new business for him.

Earl talked about how he has realized that he knows very little about how things work, but he has learned, like in the golf swing, you have to get out of the way, and let things take shape. Clearly, Earl didn’t just sit back and sulk and feel victimized. He actually got off his butt, embraced where life had placed him and went to work expanding his business. Now he is in a situation, where he had another shop, and which closed for renovations, and he is not sure he wants to go back to it. He likes the freedom he now has and the ability to develop new business around the city.

As Earl was telling me this story I started asking myself, “where am I holding on to a piece of the rock and not allowing the new opportunity to come my way? “  Sometimes I might feel I can’t give up this thing over here, because if I do, I won’t be able to sustain myself. My income will drop and my idea won’t work. Earl’s story was very timely for me because at this moment I am in the process of discovery and change. Time to let go.

This entry was posted on Friday, December 14th, 2007 at 6:21 am and is filed under blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.