Big Belief
Several years ago I was speaking to 3,000 people at a sales training conference in Atlanta. The crowd overflowed with excitement and positive energy. The purpose of the meeting was to provide opportunity and skill development for new business owners. When I finished, I walked down the steps at the side of the stage and […]
Get Ready for Success
When young actor Tim Matheson was seventeen, he landed a small role in the movie, “Yours, Mine and Ours”, starring Lucille Ball. Matheson remembers his first day rehearsing a scene with the legendary comic actress. Ball arrived on set, serious and prepared. With no explanation, she walked over to a table and moved a glass […]
Obey God Early
Recently I recovered a picture I had not seen in decades. In the photo, I am standing next to a young man I worked with in college (I’m the one on the left). I am nineteen. Ed and I (along with Terry and Harold) were selected by Asbury College to spend the summer conducting Youth […]
Get Help
What do Rudolph, Ole and James have in common? All three were exceptional inventors who lacked basic business sense. They were brilliant but refused to ask for help. Rudolph was fascinated by the emerging automobile industry and experimented until he created the best engine of his time. His engine performed better and lasted longer but […]
Constant Improvement
Arthur was reared in a devout Christian family that believed in hard work. Arthur knew he wanted to build a successful business. He decided to pick one thing and constantly improve it until it was the best. Only then would he sell his product. While working for a railroad, he first saved money. Then he […]
Keep Trying
When he was nine years old, he and his family walked to the neighboring state of West Virginia in search of financial opportunity. He was smart and hungry for an education and after a long day working in the coal mines, he attended school at night. When he was sixteen, he travelled to Hampton, Virginia […]
Running Over Obstacles
Benjamin Franklin once wrote, “He that is good at making excuses is seldom good at anything else.” This especially applies to a young child with polio, the 20th of 22 children from her father’s two marriages. She had both pneumonia and scarlet fever as a child and contracted polio when she was five. She recovered […]
Be Nice
Bill was born in Oklahoma in 1921. His dad was a cattle rancher. Bill attended Northeastern State University in Oklahoma and enlisted in the United States Navy in 1942. After the war, Bill moved to California and founded a candy company he named “California Confections”. While building his company he attended the First Presbyterian Church of […]
Think Differently
“Every problem contains within itself the seeds of its own solution.” Before Stanley Arnold became known for this quote, he was a teenager with an uncertain future. Stanley was interested in athletics in high school but was so physically limited that nothing he did worked. He did poorly in every sport he tried and could not […]
Connect with People
Recently I unexpectedly received information about a slice of my Father’s past that I never knew existed. My wife Amy and I were eating in a local restaurant when I saw a man enter to pick up an order. I walked over to the man and asked about him. I had known and liked him […]