Reflections

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Those who know me well, know I am lover of peace. I seek out peace in both its commonly-understood senses –- defined as the tranquility that allows us to connect with our Maker; and defined as harmonious relationships, or an absence of conflict.

Though imperfect at it, I am one for turning the other cheek, an exercise that often is not immediately rewarding, as it is usually accompanied by a painful swallowing of one’s pride.

But even the most peace-loving soul who has ever walked this Earth knew that there are times when you can not turn away from a confrontation, but must overturn tables.

Such is the scenario into which Life has drawn me.

I did not go looking for this. I had no notion ever of jousting with a corporate colossus. No, nothing of the sort ever entered my head; not here, deep in the forest of Northern Ontario, where I have chosen to make my home these past few years. Up here, the only creature with which you imagine you’d tussle is one with claws and a shiny, black pelt.

Ah, but here it is, now, that I am readying myself to engage with what can only be described as a giant in the corporate world.

There is no peace – as in harmonious relationships or an absence of conflict – here.

That’s why, yesterday, as I braced myself for the start in earnest of this battle, I slipped away into the woods, into my cathedral of the forest. There was plenty of peace there –- peace of the first kind. Peace that reminded that our lives have a purpose. Peace that reaffirmed that we are our brother’s keeper, with all the requirements of sacrifice that implies. And peace that reassured that no matter what comes, there is a rod and a staff to look to for comfort.

Mountain View, CA, restaurateur provides free turkey meal for over 1,000

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Currently on a business trip to Silicon Valley, California, I heard a restaurant in Mountain View had a sign in its window promising a free meal on Thanksgiving. So, naturally, that is where I turned up, yesterday.

Outside, under a red awning, the line was four or five people deep and extended well beyond the restaurant’s facade to about three shops down. The well-dressed and the shabbily-attired stood side by side, and a few sat in wheelchairs, chatting away as they awaited their turn to feast on the complimentary turkey, stuffing and mashed potatoes.

Inside the packed restaurant, I found the owner jovially working the room, shaking hands with diners, delivering glasses of milk or water, sweeping up whatever spilled on the floor, and generally basking in the moment.

“I am very fortunate that I could provide this for the community,” he said.

As a restaurant worker in Chicago in the 1980s, John Akkaya dreamed of having his own business, and was impressed by his employer’s tradition of providing free meals on Thanksgiving.

“I promised myself if one day I own a restaurant, I would do same thing,” the Turkish immigrant explained. “And the first year I owned a restaurant I start doing it.”

Now the proprietor of not one, but two popular Italian establishments in California, Akkaya has been treating 1,000 to 1,500 people to a free Thanksgiving meal every year for the past two decades.

“New wife, new baby, new restaurant, it all happen in one year and, God bless, I am still in the business,” Akkaya said.

He established the tradition at Cafe Figaro in Burlingame and then shifted it some seven years later to his second restaurant, Ristorante Don Giovanni in Mountain View.

Akkaya told me he has been guided by two principles which have allowed him to prosper in the United States.

“We all have to learn to share what we have. And what we don’t have, we have to learn to work for it,” he said. “That is the way I look at life. I work very hard and, same time, I share. I don’t share maybe enough, but I try to share as much as I can.”

 

 

I will do little acts of kindness for others…. I know the love and joy will come back to me.

– Journey to Joy

 

Meetup CEO talks about doing what you love

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He started a company at age 23. In just four years, the firm grew to over 100 employees,  was beating the competition, including larger, established businesses, and was being eyed for take-over.

To many people, that may look like extraordinary – even enviable – success. But for Scott Heiferman, his booming business, the online ad agency itraffic, felt like a burden.

“I realized soon after getting into that world, that I hated it,” he told an audience of about 250 budding entrepreneurs at a Meetup event organized by Startup Grind in Palo Alto, California, which I attended, yesterday evening. “The company grew and it got some success, but I didn’t know what I wanted to do.”

When the business got bought up by another ad agency in 1999, Scott couldn’t have been more relieved to walk away. He once told the New York Times: “I was so sick of working with lawyers and accountants and investment bankers that I worked the counter at a McDonald’s in Manhattan for a couple of weeks.”

He moved on to become something of a serial entrepreneur, starting up other online businesses, with varying results. And then came 9/11. What struck Scott was the way people connected with each other in the aftermath.

“For a little bit there, New York became a pretty friendly place,” he told the audience, yesterday. “I talked to more neighbors in the days after 9/11 than I had in recent years
of living in New York, having moved to New York from Iowa, a few years earlier.”

Inspired by this experience to use his online skills to make it easier for people to connect with others in their local community, Scott launched Meetup.com in early 2002. Backed by investors such as eBay, Omidyar Network, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Esther Dyson, and Union Square Ventures, the company today boasts some impressive stats:

  • 9.5 million members worldwide
  • 92,000 monthly local groups
  • 90,000 meetup topics
  • a presence in 45,000 cities
  • 280,000 meetups organized.

As CEO at Meetup, Scott heads a company with some 80 employees, and although that puts him in right about the same position he was in with his online ad agency, there’s no running away from this gig. In fact, he says Meetup may be the last company he starts: because he is so dedicated it, he plans to stick with it to make it the best it can be.

“Life, and work, and success is just about getting to work on something that you think is important or is worth doing and is interesting and will help people,” he said.

Who would argue with that definition of success?

 

 

My life work is my gift to myself, and to the world. It is the unfolding of my promise; it is the legacy that says I lived. I will fight for it. I will struggle with it. I will do that work which I love, for doing it is its own reward.

– Journey to Joy