by Max Marbut
Staff Writer
After watching two successful businesses go down the drain due to first, the economic climate and then world events, author, motivational speaker and executive coach John Chappelear decided it was time to reprioritize his business and personal lives.
The Ponte Vedra resident has written “The Daily Six: Six Simple Steps to Find the Perfect Balance of Prosperity and Trust” and travels the country sharing what he has learned.
“I like to say I’m a ‘recovering big shot,’” he said.
In 1979 Chappelear started a business on his card table selling office supplies and furniture in Washington, D.C. Ten years later, he had a 25,000-square-foot warehouse full of inventory and was writing $60 million worth of invoices a year.
“I was in the top 2 percent nationwide in the office supply business and the third-largest in the D.C. area,” he said. “That was in the days before Office Depot and Staples.”
By 1989 the economy had slowed and while the business had grown, Chappelear said, “I didn’t have much cash even though I had a lot of inventory.”
When the way businesses dealt with banks changed that year, Chappelear said he found himself in the same situation as Donald Trump.
“The problem was I had way too much debt and not enough equity,” he said.
The Monday morning after the Super Bowl in 1991, Chappelear said he got to the office and found a fax the bank had sent to him the day before. His loans had been called and, within two months, he was essentially out of business.
After that experience, Chappelear decided to start a new venture.
“I opened a print brokerage business because I wanted something that had no inventory. I wanted something I could do with just contacts and a telephone,” he said.
While he was building his brokerage business, Chappelear’s outlook on life began to change.
“I began working on trying to build more of a sense of balance in my life,” said Chappelear. “I had lost my relationships with my wife and kids four years earlier. I had remarried and had another child and I began to see that relationship begin to deteriorate because I was so focused on getting ahead and building a business.
“I had an epiphany,” he continued. “I decided to find a way to build my life on a different set of principles. I began to stop thinking about what was in it for me and began thinking about what was in it from me. I started putting service ahead of self. It was amazing how quickly the business began to prosper even without my having to be there seven days a week, 20 hours a day.”
When his friends started telling him he had changed, Chappelear realized it was because of his new outlook.
Early in 2001 Chappelear decided what he really wanted to do was share what he had learned with other people. Later that year, everything in Chappelear’s business life changed again.
“I was doing a lot of printing for big conventions and a lot of direct mail. After 9/11, the convention business dried up and the anthrax scares eliminated my direct mail accounts. I was going to have at least six months with nothing to do,” he said.
Chappelear said he knew it was time to become a full-time speaker, trainer and writer.
At first, he printed his six principles of willingness — daily quiet time, love and forgiveness, service to others, gratitude and action — on a business card he passed out after speaking engagements.
“People kept asking if I had a book,” he said. “If you’re going to be credible in this industry, a book is what’s required.”
Pretty soon, he had written a manuscript and started shopping it to publishers.
“Putnam gave me the same editor and marketing team that did ‘Who Moved My Cheese?’ and now it’s in bookstores all over the country and on Amazon.com.
“The book seems to strike a chord with the baby-boomers and older Gen-Xers,” he said. “Before you’re 30, you think of yourself as tireless and bullet-proof. After 60, hopefully you’ve already fixed it. If you haven’t fixed it by then, it probably isn’t going to get fixed.”
“The best part of what I do now is that I am actually doing something that changes peoples’ lives. The material changes the way people see themselves and other people. I can be a part of improving someone’s life or organization.”