Success

Alan McGuiness tells the story of Bette Nesmith, a single parent with a nine-year old son, who worked in a Dallas Bank. She seemed rather average with no particular promise for big things. She was glad to have the secretarial job – $300 a month was very good for 1951 – but she did have a problem: how to correct the errors she made with her new electric typewriter. Nesmith has been a freelance artist, and artists never correct by erasing, they simply paint over the error. So she concocted a fluid that she could use to paint over her typing errors.

Before long all the secretaries in the building were using what she then called “Mistake Out.” An office supply dealer encouraged her to manufacture the paint, but marketing agencies weren’t impressed, and companies (among them IBM) turned her down cold. But the secretaries continued to like the product, so Nesmith’s kitchen became her first manufacturing facility. Orders began to trickle in, and she hired a college student to help her sell the product. But it was not easy for two inexperienced saleswomen. “People will never paint out their mistakes,” a dealer would say. Records show that from August 1959 to April 1960, the company’s total income was $1,142.71, and its expenses were $1,217.35. “I don’t know how I made it,” Bette said. She worked part-time as a secretary, managing to buy groceries and save $200 to pay a chemist to develop a fast-drying formula.

With the improved product, Nesmith began taking her little white bottles around the country. She stopped in small towns and big cities. Upon arriving in a city, she wrote, “I’d get the phone book and write down the names of dealers and then call them. We’d go to each office supply store and leave 12 bottles.” Eventually orders began to pour in and the Liquid Paper Corporation began to fly. When she sold the company in 1979, the tiny white bottles were earning $3.5 million annually on sales of $38 million, and Gillette paid $47.5 million for the firm.

Source: Alan Loy McGuiness, 1985, Bringing Out The Best In People, Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing, p.102-103

The Price for Success: There’s a story told about a man, dying of thirst, who staggers up to a disused well on an old desert road. The man begins to pump the handle like crazy but there is no compression and nothing happens. Just then he notices that there is a note in a bottle lying beside the well. The note reads:

“This well is in good working order and will produce ample drinking water to satisfy your needs. You just have to prime the pump first to be able to get at the water. Look underneath the white rock beside the well and there is another bottle buried in the sand with just enough water for you to prime the pump. Pour all of the contents from this bottle into the chamber by the pump handle and then continue to pump furiously until the water flows. Don’t think that it won’t work – it will. And don’t drink any of the water in the bottle – there is only enough to prime the pump! Just have faith, follow these instructions and the well will deliver plenty of water. Afterwards, please refill the bottle with fresh water and put it back under the rock for the next traveller.” – Signed, ‘Indian’ Joe.

What price, success? Faith; commitment; the will to win; desire; willing to take risks. The above story illustrates the need for all these qualities, but also something else: the readiness to accept advice, to help others and to always leave something of value behind you, wherever you leave.

Some time ago the following experiment was undertaken at a marine aquarium. A savage barracuda was placed into a large tank of water. The tank was then partitioned down the middle with another piece of glass, and a mullet fish was placed into the other side of the tank. Immediately the barracuda tried to attack the mullet but half way across the tank, the onslaught was abruptly and painfully cut short by the wall of partitioning glass. The barracuda recovered and tried again, and again, and again, but each time he bumped his snout against the glass. Eventually, the barracuda learnt that chasing mullet fish was a painful experience and so it gave up trying. A little while later the glass partition was removed but the barracuda would still only swim up to the point where the barrier had been, then it would turn around and swim back again. The barracuda had conditioned itself to believe it could not succeed and so it gave up trying.

It is the same with a lot people. The fact is you can condition your mind to accept that you won’t succeed – just like the barracuda – but, conversely, you can also condition your mind to overcome your own self-imposed limitations.

R. Ian Seymour

R. Ian Seymour, excerpt from Discover Your True Potential

Alan McGuiness relates that in 1875 a sickly child was born in Upper Alsace, who was slow to read and write and was a poor scholar. But as he grew up he made himself master subjects that were particularly difficult, such as Hebrew. In music, he turned out to be a genuine prodigy, playing the organ at eight when his legs were scarcely long enough to reach the pedals. At nine he substituted for the regular organist in a church service.

His name was Albert Schweitzer, and everyone knows how by early manhood he had several professional lives proceeding concurrently. At the University of Strasbourg he earned his first Ph.D. in philosophy then went on to win doctorates in theology and music theory. By the time he was 30 he had a flourishing career as a concert organist and was publishing a stream of books. But then he abruptly stopped his academic career in order to study medicine and devote the rest of his life to being a missionary. This had begun when by chance he read a magazine article about the Congo. “While we are preaching to these people about religion,” the article said, “they are suffering and dying before our eyes from physical maladies.”

Schweitzer had received his calling, and he began to lay plans to go to Africa. Friends protested: if the aborigines of Africa needed help, let Schweitzer raise money for their assistance. He certainly was not called upon to wash lepers with his own hands.

There will always be such people who seem to find it their calling to flatten our dreams and diminish our lives. But there will always be a few, thankfully, who will encourage our ideals and gladly join us in our goals. When Schweitzer fell in love with Helen Bresslau, the daughter of a Jewish historian, he bluntly proposed: “I am studying to be a doctor for the people of Africa. Would you spend the rest of your life with me in the jungle?” And she answered, “I shall become a nurse. Then how could you go without me?” And on Good Friday 1913, the two of them left for the French Equatorial Africa. For more than 50 years he served there, eventually to become a Nobel laureate and a legend.

Source: Alan Loy McGuiness, 1985, Bringing Out The Best In People, Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing, p.90-91

Let me tell you about Dame Catherine Cookson (1906-1998). An illegitimate child born in the slums of Jarrow in the North East of England, she never knew her father; she believed her grandparents were her parents and that her mother was her sister. She worked in a laundry until she married at the age of 22. She was unable to have children, and this, on top of her deprived childhood and the fact that whenever she heard the word ‘illegitimate’ or ‘bastard’ caused knots in her stomach, resulted in her having a nervous breakdown at the age of 39. But Catherine Cookson then went on to spend over fifty years writing more than one hundred books, which to date have been translated into 17 different languages and have sold over 100 million copies. That is the equivalent to selling over 5000 books a day, every day for 50 years. And that figures continues to grow to this day.

I heard a story about a businessman, on a trip to America, who came across one of those shoeshine stands that nowadays you tend to only see in the old movies. Above the stand was a sign and in big letters the words, “Smiley’s Shoe Shine – prices from $3 to $6.” Being a foreigner and noticing the dust on his shoes, the businessman decided to take in the experience and have his shoes polished by an expert. Reflecting on his experience afterwards, the businessman said, “Just how anyone can get so excited about cleaning a pair of shoes, I really don’t know, but Smiley was a man with a passion and a man who lived up to his name. He saw his job, not so much as someone who simply polished shoes, but as someone who had the opportunity to polish up his customer’s day. He whistled and sang as he worked and we chatted away amiably about this and that. By the time he had finished we had become friends. I asked Smiley how much I owed him and he told me, “$3”. I then asked him why his sign said prices from $3 to $6. Smiley’s reply was priceless (excuse the pun): This is what he said, “Well, I get to meet a lot of folks. Some of them have a good attitude and so I charge them $3, but others have a bad attitude and so I charge them $6.” Smiley then flashed his pearly whites and grinned, “You see, Mister, some people just don’t realise how much a bad attitude costs!”

Many great people began life in the poorest and most humble of homes, with little education and no advantages. Thomas Edison was a newsboy on trains. Andrew Carnegie started work at $4 a month, John D. Rockefeller at $6 a week. The remarkable thing about Abraham Lincoln was not that he was born in a log cabin, but that he got out of the log cabin.

Demosthenes, the greatest orator of the ancient world, stuttered! The first time he tried to make a public speech, he was laughed off the rostrum. Julius Caesar was an epileptic. Napoleon was of humble parentage and far from being born a genius (he stood forty-sixth in his class at the Military Academy in a class of sixty-five). Beethoven was deaf, as was Thomas Edison. Charles Dickens was lame; so was Handel. Homer was blind; Plato was a hunchback; Sir Walter Scott was paralyzed.

What gave these great individuals the stamina to overcome severe setbacks and become successful? Each person had an inner dream that lit a fire which could not be extinguished.

John Maxwell

John C. Maxwell, 1993, Developing The Leader Within You, Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, p.145-146

John Maxwell defines the success journey in these terms: knowing, growing and sowing.

• Knowing your purpose in life.
• Growing to reach your potential.
• Sowing seeds that benefit others.

Three businessmen were discussing the definition of success and what it would mean for them to feel that they had ‘arrived’. The first one said, “I’d consider myself a success if I was summoned to 10 Downing Street for a private consultation with the Prime Minister.” The second chipped in, “My definition of success is to be called to Number 10 for a private meeting with the Prime Minister, then the telephone hot line rings during our discussion and the Prime Minister ignores it.” Finally the third one gave his opinion: “No you’ve both got it wrong!” he said, “You’re a success when you are in the middle of private talks with the Prime Minister, the hot line rings, he answers it and then says, ‘It’s for you!’”

R. Ian Seymour

R. Ian Seymour, excerpt from Discover Your True Potential