Welcome to the Steve Show! Today, I want to talk about the gift of putting family first. Family is everything to me. And modeling that to others and having them benefit has been such a rewarding experience for me too.

I want to share a story. When my son was studying Thomas Edison, we went to southern Florida to visit his winter lab. He’s now in love with comics, so we took the family to Comic Con and my kids could meet Stan Lee, an Icon in the comic book industry, previous president of Marvel Comics.

After we did this my son came to me and said, “Dad, thank you for taking me to Comic Con. Most kids don’t get to go to something like this and you also paid more so I could meet Stan Lee. Thank you Dad.”I told him, “You’re welcome and I’m so happy you are filled with such gratitude.”

I shared the above story on stage once at the Santa Clara Convention Center, just after I took my kids to Comic Con. I shared how grateful I was to be able to have this opportunity and how much my kids had such an amazing time.

It really brought me to tears in that moment because I was thinking about how my father could’ve never done that for me. Because of the choices that I’ve been able to make, I get to spend time with my kids.

But here is where it gets better—in the audience, a man by the name Bill Lopez came up to me after my talk, and he said, “Thank you so much. I can’t tell you how much of an impact you just made on my life this morning. I’m going to send you a gift.”

I didn’t think much of it at the time. But Bill went on to say that it took him 20 years to take his son to a Comic Con.

Two days later, I get a FedEx and I’m opening the FedEx and I knew it was a gift. I didn’t understand the amount of gift it was. But it was a gift for my son Dominico. The gift was an Amazing Spiderman Figurine platinum edition number 1.

It’s in a protective plastic because this is somewhere around the 600 – 900-dollar range, and, it has Stan Lee’s autograph on it! I just can’t tell you how amazed I was! I have so much gratitude.

Your Action

So, one thing that I always teach is to put your life and your family’s life on your calendar first, and then build your business around that.

Put down what you want and then work to fit all your business around that.

Choose Gratitude Create Freedom

Steve Napolitan