Nothing Happens Until You Take Action I have been speaking in the towing industry since I had hair (and brown hair at that). Now my hair looks like I served at the Last Supper. Over those years I’ve tried different techniques to inspire audiences to achieve success. Systematically, this one works very well. Results are always the same.
In my seminars to demonstrate the power of taking action, I sometimes hold up a $100 bill and ask “Who wants this $100 bill?” Lots of people will raise their hands. Some will shout out, “I want it!” or “Give it to me!” Eventually someone jumps out of their seat and races to the front of the room to take the $100 bill from my hand. After the person sits down with my $100 bill, he or she is a little richer for the effort. I always ask the audience “What did this person do that no one else in the room did? He or she got off their butt and took action.”
One time at a Tow Show in Baltimore, I put money under the seats just to get towers up off their assets. It was proof that to get money, you’ve got to get up and take action.
Jonathan Winters, a Grammy award winning comedian, was the Robin Williams of the 80’s and 90’s. Winters once said, “If your ship doesn’t come in, swim out to meet it.”If you want to succeed in life you must do exactly that, “GO FOR IT!”
What prompts people, the select few, to run and take my money? Furthermore, what hinders the others from running to get it? Were they too embarrassed to run to the front? Perhaps people might think that they were greedy or needy? Here are some real answers I get when I ask people why they didn’t come get the money. I really wanted to know what stopped them from this action.
Just as I thought, some said, “I didn’t want to look like I needed it that bad.” Understandably one or two will say, “I was too far back in the room”. “I didn’t want to look greedy”. I get that one! Here’s one that surprised me, “I wasn’t sure if cheap, DJ would give me the money.” Another said, “I was afraid I might be doing something wrong, and then people would judge me or laugh at me.” One tower said, “I was waiting for further instructions.” Their answers are always the things they say to themselves to stop their own successes.
One thing my Dad told me and my 11 brothers and sisters (yes, 11 brothers and sisters with same Mom and Dad). He said, “How you do anything is how you do everything”. If you are cautious here, you are probably cautious everywhere. If you hold back because you don’t want to look funny or out of place, you more than likely will do that sort of thing in other situations, YOU WILL HOLD BACK.
I have been teaching a long time. What separates winners from losers more than anything else is winners take action. Winners are the towers that get up in the middle of the night and just take action. Winners are the towers who get to the vehicle that just caught on fire and pull the person out. They take action. Mr. Dunn’s son did that in Virginia a few years ago. He just took action…he is a winner in my book.
I believe that successful people are highly action-oriented. It’s the tower who starts a savings account for that new truck or started putting money aside for more land to extend the yard from which they work.
My wife and I went to attend a reading in Atlanta last year. My friend Gene Griesman was the playwright and he was performing the role of Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President of the United States. Gene plays Lincoln so well. One of Lincoln’s lines was, “Things may come to those who wait, but ONLY the things left are by those who hustle.” If you’ve studied history surrounding the passing of the 13th Amendment then you know what I’m about to say is true. If Abraham Lincoln had waited for someone else to get that Amendment passed and hadn’t taken the action he did at the time, then most likely the slavery issue wouldn’t have been settled until much later in history. Lincoln TOOK ACTION.
All towers need to take action. In some cases, towers get bogged down in analyzing, planning and organizing, and what they really need to do is take some action. Let me end with this. When you take action, you trigger all kinds of things that will carry you to success. You let the people around you know you are serious about your intentions. Then people around you wake up and join you with similar goals, and they, too start to take action.
Thanks for reading this article. Tow Professional magazine is an informative publication. You need to read each page and then TAKE ACTION on that project you’ve been considering. As the manufacturer Nike says, “Just Do It”. Just do it….take action.
See you next time or at the next tow show. It’s a pleasure to hear from many of you that you appreciate my articles. Thank you for the encouragement.
