Written by: Chuck Bean, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
About a decade ago, I was writing my father's eulogy. My dad was a happy-go-lucky fellow. A high school dropout, he was as much a loner as he was a conversationalist. Sometime between two and three in the morning before his memorial and trying to capture his manner of living in one single phrase, I came up with the thought - “families don’t create relationships; relationships create families.
It resonated with me, and it encapsulated his life and much of what he passed on to most of us children. Dad didn’t necessarily put weight on the family as always being a great thing. He would choose who he engaged with carefully. He would openly share his thoughts with people that he related with, and not always those he was related to.
His values were built around not giving up, that work is hard, rewards can be lean, and disappointment is as or more prevalent as success.
10 years later, I still share this statement with people. One is my sister, and the others are my formed family, my lifetime of friends who number only a few, but those few are deep, valued, and I know that all of us would do almost anything to help each other out, and always with empathy.
One might even think of our relationships as a form of love, conditional love, of course. Why conditional?
I overheard someone talking recently about unconditional love, and they were prognosticating as to how having been in a long-term relationship, the unconditional love had evaporated. It caused me to remember that unconditional love is a pipe dream and only applies to pets. The love between people will always be conditional, and it is those conditions that keep us together and, if lost, break those bonds of love.
This leads to a point. Expect not your families to be your source of relationships rather turn your great relationships into sources of family.
One family or many families. Work families, play families, and even families who are families!
Chuck Bean, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Chuck (Charlie) Bean started his business career at age 6, collecting golf balls at the local driving range for pennies. “I would spend every Saturday and Sunday making enough money to buy a bottle of pop or a candy bar in the concession”, tells Chuck soon after he was selling golf balls to players on the local course, and even beer!
Fast forward, and Chuck was an award-winning sales professional. Management followed. Moving into the paper industry, Chuck carried on with regional and then national turnarounds, eventually being named VP Sales and Service overseeing a team of 180 inside and outside salespeople, managers, and directors.
Following his dream, he opened a consulting and training advisory. Chuck will tell you he has had a great ride. Besides having worked with over 400 companies and over 18,000 individuals, Chuck has consulted and guided some of Canada's biggest stars, including working as COO for what was one of the largest specialty energy service companies in the world.
Today Chuck specializes in developing strategies and delivering training and coaching in leadership, sales, communication, business value building, and teamwork. He is no-nonsense and pragmatic and has helped people and corporations succeed for over 40 years. He will call a spade a spade and work quickly to understand, address, and help fix problems, identify opportunities and identify challenges.
He has developed business strategies for almost every geo-market and has worked extensively in oil and gas, general industry, IT, electronics, dental, paper, chemical, wood products, and consumer packaged goods. He specializes in B2B and channel-type organizations.
He has authored/contributed to books with Dr. Stephen Covey, Dr. Deepak Chopra, and Dr. Ken Blanchard. Chuck also owns 6 tech start-ups currently in different levels of commercialization.
