Jeff Applegate

In Genesis chapter 2, following God’s magnificent creation of the earth, God concluded creation with his greatest and final act of creation.  God instituted the family to rule over his creation as he created man, and from man’s flesh, a companion suitable for him: woman.   Family is God’s holy institution created by Him and forms the foundation for human social structure and perpetuates the human race.  The breakdown of the family unit in our generation has caused unfathomable damage leveling a severe toll on every area of society. 

 In writing a book I hope that my experience in business and leading my family can be used by couples to help in leading their family. But my heart and passion is for the men.  It is the men who are commanded to impress God’s commandments on the hearts of their children.  It is the men who bear the ultimate responsibility for the leadership of the family and who, today, do not have a model to follow. Many have lost their confidence and are struggling to know how to lead.  Many men gain their identity and define themselves by their career.  When two men meet and enter into a conversation what is the first or second question that is asked?  What do you do for a living?  The answer to this question is the way men identify with each other and frame their stature and position in our society.  Men are driven to pursue success in their career, and they find their career competing and all too often winning their energy and affections.  How can we leverage the training, experience and expertise that men and women gain from their careers and challenge them to be the CEO and leader of their household?  You will find that many of the decisions and direction for our families are the same things we do every day in our careers.  Whether you work for a local bike shop or are the CEO of a Fortune 100 company, you are the leader or have leaders to model from in your business profession.  You may have been trained to work: at a trade, as an educator, at a government agency. You may have graduated from medical school, law school or business school; but you are part of a business enterprise that delivers a product or service in exchange for funds to perpetuate the business.  Moms are especially critical to this since stay at home moms manage the most foundational enterprise in our country: the building up, growth, and needs of our families. We operate in business enterprises of various professions and practice the skills needed every day to make something happen and hopefully something of lasting impression.  Applying these ideals to the family is something that you will find that you not only can do, but want to do as you see the impact and effect it has upon your spouse and kids.  If you take the small steps now of creating and implementing a plan, with your spouse and kids involved, you will see great dividends in the months and years to come. Many of us spend countless hours looking at how to make our work better or our companies more profitable. In the same breath, we need, as I’ve learned, to make sure we are looking at how to help our families function with consistent messages about who we are, what we stand for, and how that shapes every decision we make. By investing in our families futures, we may experience exponential returns from good decisions made by our family for our family, our community and for future generations to come.

I attended Baylor University and studied Finance and Entrepreneurial Management.  At the time I really had no idea of what I would do when I graduated.  How many know what they want to be “when they grow up”?  To be honest, I wasn’t really ready to grow up either.  I enjoyed my afternoon hunting trips, lunches at the girl’s dorm with friends, intramural sports several times a week, and summers working on Table Rock Lake.  As I approached graduation and knew I had to begin thinking about what I wanted to do after college, I asked my Entrepreneurial Management professor Flynn Bucy for some ideas.  It was then I was first learned about how a vision for the future could help direct my current actions.  I had shared with Flynn that I had no idea what I wanted to do for a career.  He asked me to describe what success looked like at age 70.  It was much easier for me to paint a picture of what a successful career would look like at 70 than what I could do at 23.  He suggested that I begin with a vision of success of the end of my career and begin working backwards.  If I could describe what success looked like at 70, could I describe it at 60, 50, 40, and so on.  As I did this I was able to narrow my career options and help me choose career options that fit my interests and provided a path to reach my goals.

In 1996 I had been working for a mid-sized company frustrated with the lack of direction for the business.  I read an article published in the Harvard Business Journal written by Jim Collins entitled Building your Company’s Vision.  This article described common characteristics of lasting great companies.  Companies that consistently out performed others over many business cycles shared a common theme of maintaining a clear Vision or picture for all to follow.  Again, I was inspired to describe what success looked like for our business.  Two years later, I had the opportunity to write the business plan and begin the journey of building a team, making physical changes to the facilities and begin the effort of steering our business to a Vision for the future. 

 In 2004, the responsibility of leading my young family began to occupy my thoughts.  I had two boys (6 and 4) and a daughter (2).  The years were moving fast and before long they would be grown.  It was only natural to apply some of the same visioning tools that I learned in college and practiced in my career to begin with the end in mind and start to work backwards.  What does a successful family look like?  Can I identify the things our parents practiced that we would like to practice in our family?  Are there other families in our community that we look up to and inspire us?  What are the characteristics that can help us describe a successful family?  Developing a vision for your life or for your family can provide the inspiration and direction that you need to keep you on the right track.  Take a moment and simply jot down some of the characteristics that you would aspire to live to.  Pull those into a statement or a few sentences that provide a clear picture of where you are going.