Greetings from Houston Texas!
There is an old motivational story that has been beaten to death amongst the “turn that frown upside down” folk.
Every morning, in the jungle a Gazelle wakes up and realizes it must outrun the fastest Lion or it shall become a happy meal for the son of a bitch (I had to dress it up sorry motivational speakers) At the same time, the Lion wakes up and realizes it must outrun the slowest Gazelle or its gonna starve and Mrs Lion is gonna give him da shit. Also, no nookie, but I digress.
Morale: Whether you are a Lion or a Gazelle you must always be running!
What this means is that whether we work for a 1.3 billion dollar giant or the little mom and pop company . . . we had better be running too.
Common sense? I’m not so sure!
If you were to take the Fortune 500 as they were in the 1980’s and put that list side by side with the list as it appears today, 230 have perished, gone, dead, buried. Why? A variety of reasons that can all be explained simply by saying they weren’t running. Perhaps they became like the lions in the video sitting on their assess waiting for the business to come to them. Worse yet, maybe they were like the dumb ass gazelle running into trees and getting swallowed up by their competitors.
Today’s message is simple: Run hard, run fast and make sure that in these challenging times you are using your head and running smart.
To your inevitable success!
PS Please forward this to your sales team. I wanna be famous someday and can't do it without your help!
Oh contrare monfrare, you already ARE famous! I read your blogs every day. Thanks for the words of wisdom, Uncle Paul!
ReplyDeletePaul, I've posted this anonymously.
ReplyDeleteGood story intent but the real point to your post (that of survival of the fittest) is hampered in the [crass'ness] of your message. It's also a marketing misnomer we should be running.
Exactly where should we be running to or from - metaphorically speaking - and why when those we want to sell to are forced to run from us? I don't see anyone trying to eat me up when they're too starved to get to me, follow? :)
Yes, it's an economic Serengeti, the lakes are dry and we await monsoons of economic prosperity and demand side economics again!
However, what we are doing is about drawing people to a message, which is: Put on our socially minded caps to draw together and unite economic force; rather than RUN, it's THE LION! or, RUN, because you're A GAZELLE! (metaphorically speaking)
If anything, rather than running to compete, hunt and kill; we walk, serve, and assist - through enligtenment. (done in my best deepak chopra voice)
Survival of the fittest killed hunters and hunted. Now hope's hanging by a thread. A thread that can only be strenghtened by a real vision for putting people first out of harms way. Fires are everywhere in the jungle, running creates panick.
And clearly going forward with realistic business and sales objectives, in this day and age, uniting and binding not only serves the economy and industries much wiser; we, the sales people become the ultimate benefactors when we stand as leaders of our words - the words of change- not status quo.
This is, after all, why we are socially networking ourselves into a frenzy. I'd like to meet one person whose pulse hasn't risen ten beats as a result. Otherwise, why are we doing this?
Shock and Awe went out with bad wars and stupid oil prices. Famous Texans shock and awe'd the world into a disaster. Time to lighten up a little because in a global economy, we're not all from Texas :)
Love your work - all the best, Paul!
@anonymous I appreciate your perspective and think you may have read much further into my comments than was intended.
ReplyDeleteRunning in the sense of get up and do something about the circumstances. Running in the sense that complaining about how bad things are doesn't solve challenges. Running in the sense that whether things are good or bad, or whether we are the giant or the mom and pop we had better not get complacent.
Panick was not the intended message.
The other part of the message was running in the sense of being smart and not panicking as the gazelle clearly did in the video. Or perhaps I am wrong and the gazelle had it together but was just a dumb shit.
That being said, I don't want the intended point of my post to diminish the incredible point you made here.
Thank you for that!
Respectfully,
Paul