A few university degrees and the corporate ladder prepared me to found and run Bizware Online Applications Inc, but that has turned out to be preparation too. At 65, I wasn't as prepared as I wanted to be for the double-barreled question, "What have you accomplished, and what worthwhile result can you do with whatever time is left?"

Questions of the value of one's life's work inevitably lead in spiritual directions. I was not looking to join an organized religion, though I have great respect for most as the wisdom traditions of our various cultures. I was plagued as were the early Greek philosophers with understanding my purpose, my mission in life. I was struck unexpectedly with a need to achieve some significant legacy, to leave some great good behind as my mortality made its ungainly announcement.

Following the scientific inquiries of some of my other writings, I have concluded the likely existence of God as the ultimate definition of a great good, so I turned to him with a proposition, "Put me on an adventure that yields a better outcome to my mission in life, and I'll put you in charge of the whole business."

A series of reflections ensued, starting with a time when I was painting a fence for the Boys and Girls Club as a volunteer. I liked working outside but that forced a few conclusions. The first was that I was a crappy painter. The second was that what I could earn in half an hour could get the whole fence painted by a professional. If we use money as a way to keep score, that said I need to refocus on what I knew how to do well, mainly because I thoroughly enjoy doing it, and leverage that into some great good.

An unlikely collections of coincidences followed, often enough God's way of pulling strings, to present my legacy project just in time to forego my retirement sentence to golf and bingo. Specifically, the State of Oregon decided to take a chance on my idea to say inmate, internet, and income in the same sentence with a startup called Access2online. My sweet wife OK'd grabbing $200K from our retirement, and I was off to the races.

I did my best to teach 4 inmates in the state prison for women about how to audit websites for accessibility to the disabled, that is, so the blind could listen to the words that they couldn't see. I knew very little about the subject myself. Soon an inmate sat down in front of a PC full of enthusiasm, and asked me, "This thing got an "On" switch?" We had all the signs of the walking dead, except for the Guy in Charge. That made us unstoppable.

My years as a card-carrying geek worked out the technical details, and the inmates brought an unquenchable work ethic not part of any Hollywood movie about prisons. Unlike anything I had ever seen in the private sector, these gals had made their work their ticket to a new life, and they showed it in their thirst for understanding, dedication to producing quality, and earning the self-esteem of a card-carrying analyst. A world-class team formed around me, and I could see the results of a legacy every day. I couldn't look into their eyes and slack off. I worked hard because I had to deliver my part. I had bumbled into my purpose.

In the middle of one of the many fire drills to meet a deadline, someone interrupted me with the question, "What are you doing?" To make her go away, I blurted out, "I'm on a mission from God to change the world." Not much later, I paused to reflect that I had stumbled into the soundbite of my inspiration.

There it was, the double whammy of helping the disabled and the incarcerated. In the first case, I was helping them make use of my everyday tool of empowerment, the internet, and in the second case, I was helping inmates change themselves into better human beings. And making more than a few bucks doing so. And all the while feeling like the Big Guy was on my side, that we were all one big team. That made me more inspired than anything I could remember in all my 70+ years now.

Stopping, or even slowing down, was simply not an option when I was on the greatest adventure of my life. In a few years, we grew to a couple dozen analysts, five figures in the black each month, and the prison's poster child for bringing inmate work opportunities into the future.

So it was that I grew to realize that I was less in charge of my legacy project than it was in charge of me. The prison folks encouraged expansion and replication of an initiative that yielded an impressive 0% recidivism rate while allowing inmates to earn their seat at our nation's digital table. That was something the state legislators had been clamoring to replace a steady stream of minimum-wage parolees sadly ready to revert to their previous, better-paying careers.

With me doing little more than following the logic, that birthed the Second Chance Net Inc, a nonprofit I launched to leverage the lessons-learned with Access2online. The Second Chance Net has embarked on producing 2 versions of Access2online per year in other IT specialties where I'm at home. We are now incubating from business idea to operational proof-of-concept the next adventures, but in rapid fire succession as we open doors to more than just a few inmates.

My reward is an every-day inspiration touching the lives of people inches away from me who struggle mightily and succeed much more often than not. My takeaway is that inspiration is above all contagious.

To get inspired therefore, I urge fellow entrepreneurs to assess each new job, project, vendor, product to develop, or our many forks in our business road with this question, "How inspired are the people with whom I would be working?" Pick wisely, but count on the infection to add inspiration to your days to follow.