the success story

One of my favorite success stories of all time came from a couple I met while vacationing on Lake Erie. They lived in a beautiful home on charming Ruggles Beach, a private beach that rests midway between Huron and Vermillion, Ohio.

Their home wasn’t brand-new; it wasn’t an oversized McMansion with a triple car garage or a multi-layer stucco wonder. It was an older, white home with glossy black shutters, a creaking wrap-around porch and it rested high up on a perch, with one of the best views of the lake. I couldn’t resist telling the owners, as we shuffled around during one particularly lazy happy hour, how much I loved their home.

“We love it too, Lisa,” said John, the homeowner. “It was our dream to move here.”

“You’re lucky,” I told him, green with envy. “It’s amazing.” But it wasn’t luck, explained John.

“We always loved this house, and it went it came on the market, we couldn’t afford it. So we made some changes.”

John and his wife Lois had already got the kids off to college. So they moved, lock, stock and barrel, from their mid-century rambler in Cleveland into a trailer- and bought their dream home.

They had to use it as a rental property for years in order to make the hefty mortgage payments. Something they weren’t prepared to do and hadn’t done before, and it was terrifying. Worries about what was happening when they weren’t there, whether their precious dream home would still be in one piece after the spring-breakers left and how they would be able to pay for the inevitable, persistent home repairs, kept them up night after night.

But they did it.

In a world where so many people seem to focus on acquisition, and others can’t seem to decide what they want, I think John and Lois’ story is pretty impressive.

It shows determination, sacrifice and most of all, wisdom- they identified their dream, they made concessions to make their dream happen and ultimately, they got exactly what they wanted. It might not be your dream, or even mine, but it worked for them. And they’re more than happy- they’re content.

And isn’t that the true measure of success?