For Hefner: On Time, and Knowing Your Why

Yesterday morning, I lost my dog.

His name was Hefner. He had been sick for two days, and we were trying to get him to an emergency vet when he passed at home. I was laying with him when it happened. There is a strange mercy in that, and I am holding onto it.

Hefner loved swimming more than anything. Put him in water and he would swim around in circles, happy as could be, and never want to get out. He was loyal in the way only a dog can be. Mostly he just wanted to be close to his people and be loved on. That was his whole program, and he ran it perfectly.

I run a business that moves fast. Closings, calls, tenants, deals stacked on deals. Hefner never cared about any of it, not one bit. What he cared about was whether I was there. Sitting with him in his last hour taught me more about time than any book or mentor ever has. Time with the ones you love is not the leftover time. It is the main thing. The deals can be rescheduled. A last morning cannot.

People ask me why I am building my business the way I am, a business that can run without me standing in the middle of every step. This is the why. Money matters because it buys back time, and time is the only currency you can spend on the ones you love. If the business ever costs me the moments that matter, then the business is priced wrong, no matter what the numbers say.

Friday night I was at Man Night at my church, and we studied Paul's words in Philippians 1:21: "For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain." Paul knew his why, so even death could not shake him. Hefner's why was simpler. Love his people. Swim his circles. Stay close. He lived his why fully, every single day, right up to the last one.

I will never forget him. Hug yours a little longer today.

Still a student of this business, and of this life.