The Carpenter: A Story About the Greatest Success Strategies of All

Chapter 30All for One

The carpenter finished measuring the wood for the legs of the desk and made marks where he would cut them. Then he reached into his bag and gave Michael another wooden heart he had made for the Social Connect office with the words Love, Serve, and Care already carved into it. Then he said, “Once you know why you love, serve, and care, then you share it all with one person at a time. You gather all your love, all your desire to serve, all your care, and you give it to one person, one moment, one interaction at a time.

“You see, it’s easy to get overwhelmed when you think about having to implement Love, Serve, Care with all your team members and all your customers and all the people you interact with. It’s easy to put these systems and programs in place yet manage to not love, serve, and care for the people who are right in front of you. You get so overwhelmed with the prospect of having to do this for everyone that you wind up doing it for no one. You start to believe you can’t make a difference, so you don’t. But the truth is you can make a difference.

“It’s like the two friends walking on the beach who come across a bunch of starfish stranded on the shore. One person starts picking up starfish and throwing them back into the ocean. The other friend asks, ‘Why are you doing that? There are so many starfish stranded on the beach, you can’t possibly help them all.’ The first friend then picks another starfish up and throws it back in the ocean, and says, ...