purpose

Exercise Talent as a Service to Others

This short compilation of aerial videos was taken by my 16 year old son who is on a journey to apply his skills so that can bring value to other people. This latest updated compilation is to show what he can do for businesses that need a view from above of their properties and commercial activities.

In one of those excerpts in the compilation, you can see the first free one that he did for a local engineering firm. Through a fortuitous meeting at lunch in our local pizzeria, a man connected to a big local earth moving project was intrigued by the possibilities of affordable aerial videography. After showing his drone to the man and what it could do, the rest of the engineering team was enthusiastic about letting him fly over so they could have a dramatic capture of the hard work they were doing. My teenage son’s cheerful and diligent turnaround in the following days with behind-the-scene editing and then providing them with links and video copies was what opened the doors for being approached by another engineering team. That team wanted him to document their project in another city – but this time for pay. I’m happy to report that the filming project has now come and gone and was a great success! Another big one is now lined up based on that last success. And on and on, this 10,000 hour talent journey will keep progressing.

What application does this have for your own son or daughter’s situation? Simply that in order to really grow your child’s talent in such a way that it brings value to other people, it is necessary for your son or daughter to gradually and systematically find ways to showcase and deliver to others with some aspect of value. This value for others means that it is not just the product itself that is important, such as the final video in this example, but also that it is served in the location, manner, and timing that is important to those who will benefit from the talent. As a parent, I take this service part of the talent so seriously, that I will halt my son’s normal school work schedule in favor of him being able to quickly agree to an onsite filming schedule that is convenient to the customer. I make the school schedule bend and flex in favor of my son’s talent development. I will make his normal math or English curriculum schoolwork step aside and allow my son to make it up later in the evening or on another day.

No matter where your child is with regards to his long-term talent development, there is most likely some aspect of it that he can use today to bring value to others besides himself. If he gets your creative parental support to find a way to do it at a young age, he will have a huge advantage of not having to wait till he is in his last year of high-school to find that creative application on his own.

Make your child’s education be the slave to your child, not the master. Make it stand up and sit down on your demand. You and your child are the masters.

The Real Value of Money

French diligence in the Pyrenees mountains, 1898 — Money can be used as tool to help fulfill your calling (Photo credit: Marcel Douwe Dekker)

Guest Post by Levi Heiple.

Money is a means of fulfilling your calling.

I grew up with a skewed view of money. My parents had a lot of consumer debt. I grew up in a Christian culture that implicitly (and sometimes even explicitly) viewed money as inherently evil–necessary to pay the bills, but evil nonetheless. This is not what my parents taught me, but it is what I picked up from the culture around me.

Little did I know, that the Bible actually teaches that wealth is a desirable tool of dominion. It buys you time to work on your calling. It allows you to build infrastructures to advance God’s kingdom.

I wish I had had this view of money before I went to college.

If I could go back to the summer after my high school graduation, this is what I would do differently:

First, I would identify the five most important things I wanted to achieve in my life. These have nothing to do with money. It has to do with the legacy I wanted to leave behind and what I wanted to pass on to the next generation. This is my calling.

Next, I would spend the rest of the summer thinking about what kind of jobs would give me the most amount of capital for my calling in the least amount of time. It could be money to fund the projects. It could be a network of relationships. It could be skills and knowledge I need to fulfill my calling.

Finally, I would ask myself if getting a college degree would accelerate or hinder my progress towards that goal. In other words, I would take the time cost (anywhere from 4-12 years) and the money cost ($50,000+?) and I would ask myself, “if I took the same amount of time and money, could I make a better long-term investment?”

Perhaps going to college would be the best investment for your child. It would be the best place for him to get the network, knowledge, and skills he needs for his lifelong pursuit. Or maybe it will give him more credibility in his field than he would have otherwise obtained by doing other activities.

On the other hand, you could discover that there is a better way to invest those first several years of adulthood.

About Levi Heiple

Levi Heiple is a writer/entrepreneur who specializes in electronic training and support systems. He connected with Jonathan Harris after being asked tutor his son, Caleb. You can sign up for Levi’s free weekly tip on “reading for innovation” at BookBlitzMethod.com. You can find his professional website at LeviHeiple.com. You can find his web design service at WebPromoPackage.com.