The Value of Tenacity – The Story of Maurice “The Rocket” Richard was one of a series of Value Tales books my parents bought for us kids.  This book was a storybook tale on how The Rocket made it to the NHL.

I’ve hung on to the books, and now my kids are reading them.  I was reading the Value of Tenacity book with my kids the other night and wondered if reading it as a young kid helped to shape me into who I am today.

Some interesting quotes came out of the story book, here’s a few for you to consider:

“no one ever gets ahead who quits when the going gets tough”

“all you need is tenacity”

“The only way you’re going to improve is to play with and against players who are better than you are”

“We all have a lesson to learn from Maurice Richard; that with complete an utter dedication to our work we can achieve great things”

The Rocket was a fierce competitor, he was the first to score 50 goals in a season and was the first to reach 500 career goals.  When he retired he was the all time leading scorer in the NHL.

If you think about it.  Tenacity is a trait that most of us had as a baby or child.  Unfortunately, for some it is bred out of them some how.  Over the years, I’ve had a slump here and there and as a pick me up I go back to the time I got my first high paying job.

I had just finished 1st year university and it was time to find a summer job.  I always had a job waiting for me in the family business but I wanted to experience what most people did…work for someone else.  I knew the things I didn’t want to do: work at McDonald’s, or Kmart as a stock boy.  I was willing to try something different…I sold Webster’s Dictionaries door-to-door.  I sold a few but for the amount of books I had to lug around I decided it wasn’t worth it.  I tried selling Kirby Vacuums door-to-door…I made one demonstration sold none – packed it in.

In the meantime, a couple of my friends landed jobs at the Department of Highways & Transportation – a government dream job.  They made it sound like the cat’s meow.  They worked on an engineering crew, worked outside, got paid $16.00/ hour and often times a lot more with all the overtime work.  I decided that I wanted to do exactly what my friends did.  There was only one problem – they were not hiring.  That fact did not deter me, I still went in and applied for a job – I was rejected, hiring was done for the summer.  For 2 weeks straight, I would visit the office every other day to see if things had changed.  One day the hiring manager finally relented…”you just don’t give up eh kid?  Go buy some steel toed boots you can start tomorrow”.  I had scored the jackpot.  The icing on the cake was that once you were hired you were an automatic hire every summer. 

I use that same tenacity today for everything I set my mind at accomplishing.  Got goals?  How bad do you want to reach them?  In sales, we experience rejection all the time.  How you deal with rejection and overcome it is what separates you from mediocre to sales superstar.  How do you become a superstar?  by being tenacious, by offering value, by learning new sales techniques, by networking more, by branding yourself as a resource for everything, by becoming a hub, a connector, the go to guy or gal.  Take action!

Blueprint to Success

Back in my days of banking one of the first things I asked for when someone came to me for a business loan was their plan. Or some sort of plan of action if it was an existing client asking for more money. No plan usually meant no money. I read a quote somewhere “failure to plan is planning to fail” and as a banker I saw varying degrees of this day in and day out.  For me, my success has always come from working a plan and making slight adjustments along the way. I would start off with the end goal in mind and work backwards to determine the series of mini-steps that would lead me to my goal. This same process has worked for me every time it did not matter what I was doing from meeting corporate objectives forced upon me to personal goals such as completing a 1/2 marathon.

What is a good plan or Goal? One that is S-M-A-R-T.

S - Specific - you should have a definite end result i.e. I want to weigh 180 pounds by x date and I will accomplish that by doing x activities and will achieve x milestones by such n such a date,

M – Measurable – your plan should have specific things that can be measured to determine progress. If results are not materializing as they should then adjustments must be made,

A- Achievable - your plan must make sense and be achievable…it’s ok to make some stretch goals but equally important is to be realistic. So many good plans come to an end because of unrealistic expectations.

R- Realistic - is that goal or timeline of yours a pipe dream?  Give your head a shake.  And come back to reality.  The millions if not billions of dollars spent on anything from get-rich quick to lose half of your weight in 30 days cater to the entitlement mentality that many suffer from these days.  There are the occasional miracles, grand-slams, hail marys that happen but success is in the percentages.  Work the sure thing every time and success is all but guaranteed. 

T- Timely - Until we can manage time, we can manage nothing else. – Peter F. Drucker The difference between success and failure is time.  Take note of unsuccessful people more often than not their excuse is “I don’t have time”.  Ask them to do a time diary and you will see exactly what their source of failure is.  The plain and simple truth is that there are 60 seconds in a minute, 60 minutes in an hour, 24 hours in a day and 365 days in a year we are all given these parameters.  So try to manage your time in a fashion that will give you the most productive output.  Find the thing that will ultimately give you the sense of urgency to complete your plan on time.  Do this step and you will manage your time a bit more wisely.