3 Ways to Live As Though Your Father Were Dead
My father, Barry Perzow, passed away on March 1st this year. He was not only a great father but also a passionate, award-winning entrepreneur, musician, and athlete.
As a tribute to him and a service to you, I’d like to share the three biggest lessons he taught me about business and life.
But first, let me give you a little backstory…
As a teenager, my father led a band named Barry and the Deans, playing lead vocals and guitar.
At 18, his song “Rock With Me Baby” reached the top 50, but in the 1950s, that didn’t mean fame or fortune. His family was very poor, and by 20, he had to work at a grocery store to support his parents and siblings. Starting as a bagger, he committed himself to becoming the greatest retailer in the world.
Sam Steinberg, founder of Canada’s largest grocery chain, Steinbergs, noticed my father’s ambition while he was working as a bagger and decided to mentor him. By age 28, my father was managing over 70 stores, earning the title of Steinbergs’ golden boy.
(Side note: Until his death, my father’s PIN code for everything was 2083. 20 and 83 were two of his favorite Steinberg stores that he managed.)
At 30, my father ventured out on his own and opened eight 25,000-square-foot grocery stores called BONIPRIX over the next five years.
By 40, he was an innovator and disruptor in the grocery industry, opening high-end gourmet markets before they became fashionable and organic health food stores when Whole Foods was still a single store in Florida called Bread & Circus.
Later, he founded and served as CEO of a chain of pharmacies called Pharmaca, creating a whole new market within the pharmacy industry with his unique approach.
In 2003, well into his 60s, my father won the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year award.
My father's Entrepreneur of the Year trophy, now sitting on my bookshelf, was awarded for the Pharmaca chain of pharmacies he founded and served as CEO for nearly 15 years.
However, despite his impressive resume, my father faced significant struggles as an entrepreneur. During my childhood, we frequently moved because he couldn’t afford rent. Out of frustration, he sometimes quit the grocery business to start new ventures. My bedroom often doubled as storage for his failed businesses. Without nannies, I often joined him at trade shows and retailers, stocking shelves with products that eventually ended up back in my room. I witnessed the struggle, the feast or famine, the mistakes, and the growth—or lack thereof—from those mistakes.
Reflecting on his life, I’ve learned many valuable lessons. Here are the three most important things he taught me. I hope these insights inspire you to be bold and creative while also serving as warning signals to avoid the wrong path. If my father’s life can make you pause and reflect on your own, then the time spent writing this article was well worth it.
Now, let’s dive in.
Lesson #1: Throw a cigar in your mouth and keep moving forward
My father always told me that when things got difficult in life, to “throw a cigar in your mouth and keep moving forward.” While this advice wasn’t practical when I was 7, there’s a lot of depth to this simple phrase.
My father taught me to stay positive and fake it till you make it, emphasizing that you don’t achieve success—you become it.
He believed in acting AS IF you’re successful to attract what successful people attract.
Most people follow a DO-HAVE-BE approach, thinking they need to DO a lot to HAVE nice things so they can BE considered successful.
My father, however, taught me the BE-DO-HAVE approach: BE successful, and by acting as if you are, you will DO the things that successful people do, resulting in the rewards that successful people HAVE.
The next time you’re faced with a challenging situation, ask yourself who you need to BE to move through the challenge, rather than what you need to DO to get through it.
Lesson #2: Life is not an all-you-can-eat Buffet
My father taught me to dedicate my time to the things that make me say “Hell Yeah” in my life
My dad was a simple man in many ways. He liked what he liked. He would order the same dishes at restaurants, buy the same style of clothes and shoes, go for a jog every lunchtime, lift the same weights at the gym, and spend every Sunday watching football for over 60 years.
My father only pursued things that were “Hell Yeahs” to him, including business. I never saw him work a job he hated or work for anyone else. Every business he started was innovative and creative. He was bored by the status quo and always wanted to create something new. He valued what excited him more than what was practical and solid. Reflecting on this, I realize how incredible that was. He stuck to his values and principles and never wavered.
My father inherently understood that we only have about 4,000 weeks in this lifetime and not to waste our precious time.
Warren Buffet suggests that life is not an all-you-can-eat buffet.
He advises completing the following exercise to get very specific about what you want to dedicate your life to:
Spend 15 minutes listing out everything you want to accomplish, see, and do in your lifetime, with at least 30 items on the list.
Realize that most of the items on your list of 30+ won’t happen, so don’t bother attempting them. Your 4,000 weeks aren’t enough time for that list.
Instead, pick no more than five things and dedicate your time to them exclusively.
I created my list of five a couple of years ago, and focusing on them daily has brought me a sense of fulfillment. While I still experience FOMO, I now feel much more gratitude, knowing I’m accomplishing what I’m meant to do. By cutting out everything that doesn’t align with my purpose, I’m truly living my purpose.
So, what are your top five “Hell Yeahs”?
Are you focusing on them exclusively, or are your bottom 25 taking up time in the roughly 2,000 weeks you might have left?
Lesson #3: We can’t think our way out of problems; if we could, none of us would have problems with the amount of thinking we do.
My father was a health freak: a marathon runner, lifting weights three times a week until his 80s, and taking 30 vitamins daily.
However, he became ill in the last four years of his life, partly due to a 30+ year addiction to a prescription medication called Ativan, a benzodiazepine for anxiety and insomnia.
After reading a troubling article about Ativan in the New York Times six years ago, he mistakenly quit cold turkey. This led to a seizure that caused neurological damage, which doctors believe contributed to a rare form of Parkinson’s that killed him within four years.
My father went from looking like the picture above taken with my sister to the image below, taken about two weeks before his passing, being wheeled around by my son.
Despite his apparent health, my father’s 30-year Ativan dependency revealed a man who never confronted his anxiety.
He had a troubled childhood he never spoke of, possibly masking his pain by throwing cigars in his mouth and moving forward.
I believe my father suffered from an “I am not enough” core belief, rooted in his less-than-ideal parenting.
When you believe you are not enough, life becomes a constant effort to prove that you are.
When you believe you are not enough, there’s never enough money, success, food, exercise, accolades, or compliments to make you feel as though you are.
This core belief fueled his drive to achieve—scaling became his love language.
My father numbed his pain by being a human-doer rather than a human-being.
He had no problems confronting the demons, also known as his board of directors, as a CEO but he couldn’t confront his own demons.
My father taught me a big lesson through what he didn’t do in his life…
My father was a pro at looking good, focusing exclusively on the external, what was visible to the world.
But he never journeyed into the invisible. His internal world was something he never wanted to explore, and I saw the cost of this in his life.
My father’s flaws taught me the importance of balance, emphasizing a holistic approach to life and the connection between mind, body, and spirit.
I’ve learned that spending too much time in our intellect is unwise. We can’t think our way out of problems; if we could, we wouldn’t have any.
Our physical bodies are a better place to seek wisdom. All our answers are stored in our bodies if we develop a relationship with them and learn to listen.
I’ve learned to sit with my feelings, even when I want to distract myself. Masking feelings with medication, alcohol, drugs, or sex is a way of checking out of life—living unconsciously and not being present. I saw how this affected my father, and I don’t want that for myself.
Last but not least, I’ve learned the importance of having a spiritual connection—something greater than myself. My father was Jewish but lacked a connection to the spiritual aspect of Judaism.
While I don’t follow a specific religion, spirituality is my north star, guiding me to be kind, generous, patient, and loving. The more I nourish my spiritual life, the better I feel overall.
If any of this resonates with you, my advice is:
First, avoid talk therapy if you’re seeking help. Talk therapy focuses on intellectualizing problems, but we can’t think our way out of them. This leads to “awareness hell,” where we know everything that’s wrong but find no freedom.
Einstein said we can’t solve problems with the same thinking that created them. Here’s a different approach:
Buy and read The Body Keeps the Score. [Amazon link here]
Choose one chapter that resonates with you (each covers a new, cutting-edge healing technology).
Commit three months to exploring that healing technology with a qualified professional.
Let me know how it goes
My personal favorite is Chapter 17, Internal Family Systems (IFS). I see an IFS therapist weekly, and it’s incredibly potent and effective. It helps me be a better father, leader, speaker, friend, lover, and business owner.
Take what you like, and leave the rest
I covered a lot of ground in this article, and I hope you found something insightful or even revelatory to improve your path.
It was an honor to celebrate my father authentically, acknowledging both his good and his flaws. We all have the good, bad, and ugly within us—it’s what makes us human and interesting.
We learn from victories, but we learn even more from failures. Honoring you, the reader, meant honoring all the complex facets of my father.
RIP Barry Perzow (1940 - 2024)
P.S. They say the most important thing on a tombstone isn’t the birth or death year but the dash in between. I hope my father’s dash served you well today.
That's it for this week.
See you next Thursday.
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