The Balance of Success
From a Presentation by Steve Belkin at the Family Firm Institute
Annual Conference
October 8, 2004 in Cambridge, MA
 Steven
Belkin is chairman and founder of the Trans National Group (TNG) in
Boston, a privately held corporation he started in 1974 with a credit
card and small investments from close friends. Today, TNG has grown,
to $175 million in annual sales and more than 300 employees. In 2003,
Steve realized a dream to become a principal owner of the NBA Atlanta
Hawks and the NHL Atlanta Thrashers. Steve’s wide-reaching community
commitments include trusteeships at the New England Sports Museum
and Temple Beth Elohim, and leadership roles with the Anti-Defamation
League, the Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Greater Boston, and
the Group Clinic for Children at Boston City Hospital. He and his
wife, Joan, have served on numerous charitable boards. Both are members
of the Hoffman Institute Board of Directors.
Hoffman Advisory Council member David Bork is one of the world’s
leaders in the field of business consulting to family businesses.
As founder of the "Aspen Family Business Group," David has
had in-depth, long-term involvement with some 400 family businesses.
This past October, David Bork invited Institute President Raz
Ingrasci and Hoffman Graduates and business owners Steve Belkin,
Jim Chaplin, and Paul Mazonson to participate in a panel presentation
at the Family Firm Institute Annual Conference 2004 in Cambridge,
MA.
Their presentations focused on how their Hoffman Process experiences
had influenced their personal and business lives. The following
is excerpted from Steve Belkin’s remarks.
I received a lot of positive family patterns that were passed
from generation to generation. Fortunately, both of my grandfathers
were successful entrepreneurs. Unfortunately they both lost all
of their wealth and their businesses during the Great Depression.
My father picked up the tradition of being an entrepreneur and he
started his own businesses.
So the positive tradition of starting your own business is something
that was passed along to me. But with that also came negative patterns.
Some of the beliefs that were most helpful to me in being a successful
entrepreneur also had very negative aspects.
Among those negative patterns was, "more is better."
More-is-better is a pattern that helped me early on in my life,
but once I achieved a certain level of success I felt an emptiness
inside myself. The belief that more is better did not produce happiness.
Another negative pattern was, "money makes you happy."
When I was growing up my mother and father often had conflicts over
finances and my mother would often turn to me and say, "If
only we had money, we would be happy." So, fortunately, I was
very motivated. I worked very hard. I became very successful. Again
there was not only a positive aspect to that belief, but it also
had a negative component in it. Money did not produce happiness.
A third negative belief that drove me was, "I am my money."
Who you are is how much money you have. Who you are is how many
trophies you have. So that also served me very well for a while.
I was clearly a very hard working type-A personality, but once I
achieved a reasonably high level of success I had a feeling of emptiness
and I always had to do more in order to try to feel good, and then
I would do even more. I’d win another trophy and that would
maybe feel good for a day or two and then the emptiness would come
back.
In 1991, I did the Hoffman Process. At that time I was also having
communication difficulty in my marriage. My wife, Joan, had certain
beliefs and I had other certain beliefs. When we first got married
the different philosophies kind of complemented each other. But
then, after we had been married for several years, we went from
complementing and appreciating each other’s differences to
trying to prove which view was right, hers or mine. Joan was very
happy that I went through the Hoffman Process because it helped
me become aware of my negative patterns. I really became aware that
while I had many great "masculine" qualities, my wife
had a lot of wonderful "feminine" qualities, and her family
was more characterized by feminine qualities.
I discovered that my wife could be my best teacher and that I
could become a much more whole person if I developed not only my
strong masculine qualities, but also more of my feminine qualities.
Some of my wife’s qualities that are much more feminine-oriented
are "balance is success," rather than money being success;
"happiness is appreciating what you have" instead of the
more you have the happier you’ll be.
"I am who I am" was her philosophy. It’s more
about who you are inside, while my philosophy was that it was more
about all the external toys you had that defined who you are.
So the Hoffman Process changed me significantly. It was probably
the most profound experience that I ever had. It had the greatest
impact of anything that I’ve ever done. It was the most enjoyable,
growth-filled week of my life. It was the biggest gift I’ve
ever given myself and also the biggest gift I’ve ever given
to my loved ones; because as I changed, somehow they also seemed
to change the way they interacted with me.
A few other significant changes since I did the Hoffman Process
are that, first of all, I started to re-define what success is.
Success now is not how much I have, but that I have a balance in
life. I became clear that there are five aspects of my life that
I would have to give time to no matter what and that I have a choice
in making positive proactive time available. I not only have a choice
in how I use my time but, also, what attitude I bring to the many
aspects of my life.
The five areas that we have to give time to are first, yourself.
If you don’t take good care of yourself, if you don’t
stay healthy, if you don’t exercise and spend positive proactive
time, eventually you’re going to get sick and you’re
going to have to live in negative reactive time.
The second area is your relationship to your significant other
or your spouse. If you don’t spend positive proactive time
with that person eventually you’re going to spend negative
reactive time because your relationship will deteriorate and you
will have to go through tremendous pain.
The third priority is your relationship with your children, if
you have children. If you don’t devote positive proactive
time and show attention and spend quality time with your children,
eventually they’re going to act out and you’re going
to have to spend negative reactive time with them.
The fourth area is work. We all spend more than enough time at
work so you have to figure out how to reduce work time and find
balance between work and your personal life.
The fifth area is community. If you don’t give to the community
and spend positive proactive time supporting positive social programs,
eventually that’s going to come back and hurt all of us. We
will have to spend negative reactive time because there will be
more social problems and there will be more crime.
So back in 1991 I really got inspired to give to the community.
I have redefined my life and I now give about a third of my time
and energy to the community, with non-profit charitable activities.
It turns out that a lot of the emptiness I had experienced was because
I was trying to fill myself up by doing and taking. I had the negative
belief that you fill yourself up by being a taker, by accumulating
more. After the Hoffman Process, I really discovered that I actually
fill myself up by giving more. As I give, I receive and generate
more positive energy. The joy of giving is really what can fill
the inner emptiness that I think so many of us type-A personalities
experience.
I encouraged my father and my mother to do the Hoffman Process.
My father was 80 years old when he did it. I’ve had my brother
and my sister do the Process. My wife Joan and my daughter Julie
have done it as well.
I’ve had executives at my company do the Process. We’ve
had a lot of friends who have done the Hoffman Process, probably
30 to 40 friends that we talked to several times about the Process.
All of their reactions are the same: after they resist us for 5
years, 10 years, 15 years, they finally take the Process and then
they say, "Why didn’t you get me to do it sooner!"
I’ve done a lot of personal growth; I’ve had a wonderful
education. I went to Cornell. I went to Harvard. I’ve accomplished
a lot, and I have given a lot back, but really the most significant
thing and the greatest accomplishment in my life was doing the Hoffman
Quadrinity Process.
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