This week's Pep Talk Blog: "Serendipity at Starbucks"

One chilly Kansas City winter morning, the kind most Midwesterners grow accustomed to suffering through year after year, I awakened in my hotel room about four hours before presenting a Pep Talk. I had time to kill and assessed the situation: Darling girlfriend sleeping soundly next to me would not want to be disturbed and the hotel had no gym. I would have to seek activity elsewhere.

I remember there was a Starbucks about three blocks from the hotel and decided to head there for a cup of chai, bite of food and wonderment. I glanced out the window and recognized, so I thought, a typical Midwest winter morning: cloudy and gray. So I threw on a sweatshirt and headed out the door with instructions from darling girlfriend, “Bring me a coffee and pastry.” While walking through the hotel lobby, I noticed the doorman looking at me in an odd way. Finally, he says, “Where ya going dressed like that?”

After I quickly explained my destination and offered to bring the young man a cup of coffee, he joked. “That sounds good, but you don’t have enough clothes on!” Well, I begged to differ: “Ah, don’t worry about me, I’m an athlete; three blocks is nothing.” I exited the hotel. Instantly the wind hit me like a Mack truck—cold, cold, horribly cold. The wind chill factor – about 25 below - wasn’t part of my plan, but I felt I could handle it and sprinted to the coffee shop.

The warmth of the establishment soothed my aching lungs yet I knew there was no way my “short” return trip would include another run. I’ve been called a lot of things in life, smart rarely being one of them, but even I realized it was impossible to sprint, carrying hot drinks through the frigid conditions. I had no idea what to do, then a brilliant idea hit me: I reached to pull my cell phone from my sweatpants fully prepared to call a cab for the three-block walk. Call a cab to traverse three blocks? How insane. But on this bitterly cold day, there was no other option. I dug for the phone but it was not there. It was recharging back in the room.

I looked around the coffee shop. The handful of people in the place didn’t appear remotely interested in my dilemma. NONE of them gave me a second look. Why would they? No one knew me. Then out of the blue, somebody tapped me on the shoulder. “Excuse me, are you Mark McIntosh?” Surprised I stammered, “Yep, that’s me,” I counter. “Do we know one another?”

Robert Thompson proceeded to refresh my memory about our paths crossing a few years earlier when he and some other University of Colorado Buffaloes’ fans had ventured to Pasadena, California to watch the Buffs and UCLA Bruins play at the Rose Bowl. Apparently, we had bumped into each other outside the huge stadium, and I wound up giving him a press pass that allowed him and his friends to watch the game from the press box. “What are you doing here,” I ask.

“I just stopped in here to get a cup of coffee before meeting my girlfriend for breakfast,” the financial advisor said. “I never got to thank you that day. It was great watching the game from the press box,” Robert proudly proclaimed. “So, thanks.” I saw opportunity knocking. “Robert, do you want to show me how grateful you are? Give me a ride back to my hotel!” Call it good luck, serendipity, law of circulation—whatever you like. All I know is Robert came to my rescue.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, the legendary philosopher of the 1800’s, said it pretty well: “It is one of the most beautiful compensations of life. No man or women can sincerely try to help another, without helping themselves. Serve and thou shall be served.”

That brief encounter with Robert substantiates Emerson’s philosophy and my encouragement to you: whenever you have a chance to reach out and help someone, act on it! This unlikely encounter at Starbucks is sufficient evidence, when you least expect it, “what goes around, comes around.” Who knows when such a situation may arise again? No one. But trust me, it will.