- Hello there and welcome.
Have you ever thought of failing your way to success?
Think about that for a moment.
Do you know that anyone that enjoys any kind of success
fails their way there.
That's right they do.
I want you to think of this for a moment.
See this little light here,
someone gave me this as a gift.
This is a replica of the light that Edison built
and you know,
he spent a long time before
he got this thing to glow, he really did and,
he started off because he had an image of it
in his mind that every time he tried
he failed and he failed three thousand times,
it's been said.
Now I've never really talked to Edison,
so I don't know if that's accurate
but I have an idea it is, 3,000 failures.
Now a reporter asked him one time,
how he felt about failing 3,000 times.
He says I didn't fail 3,000 times.
He said it was 3,000 steps to get to where I'm going.
You know if I were to tell you all the sad stories about
it's got me to where I am,
I would really spoil your week.
And there's been some real sad stories.
I think it might even make me cry again.
But I've had so many failures that I wouldn't
even want to guess at it.
I've blown everything I had three different times.
I never let it bother me much.
Well one time I did.
Now one time I did.
In fact I was mentioning it to Scott Edwards the other day,
just yesterday I think.
I blew it.
I lost everything.
When I bet on me, I bet the farm,
and if I miss, then you know the whole thing goes up.
And I guess I just wasn't ready to handle it.
I sat in a house in darkness.
I didn't want anybody to talk to me,
just leave me alone.
And I sat in the living room, in the dark,
the curtains closed and,
I sat there for almost a month,
feeling really sorry for Bob.
And then one day I got an idea,
and I went and I got
two recordings, long playing records
by Earl Nightingale.
He had narrated the entire book,
As a Man Thinketh by James Allen.
And I got those two records out and I started to play them.
And before they were over, I had the curtains open.
I went downtown Toronto, and I bought myself
a brand new Cadillac.
I thought, well it would sort of inspire me.
I thought I should get a new car.
So I went and got one.
And you know I had found that every time I failed,
I moved closer to the goal.
You see if you knew how to do it now,
you'd be going sideways.
When you're going after a goal, you're going ahead.
And because you're going where you'd never been,
you're going to make mistakes.
You don't know it all.
You have perfection within you,
and the objective of life is to
bring that perfection to the surface.
That's exactly what this guy did.
Well, you're going to make a lot of mistakes
bringing that to the surface.
Those mistakes are steps to where you're going.
I often tell sales people that are afraid
to make a call,
just to get out there and make a call.
And their objective isn't to sell,
their objective is, just make the call.
If you make the call and you're afraid and you do it,
you're succesful.
You've accomplished what you want to do.
You made a call.
And after you get comfortable making those calls
then you can start to polish up your presentation,
and odds are pretty good, you'll start making sales.
And if you keep polishing up your presentation,
and work on getting better, you're going to master
a thing called selling.
But if you think that you're going to enjoy great success,
there's just one win after another,
you're kidding yourself.
It just doesn't happen.
I don't even know anyone that's pulled
that kind of a deal off.
If they did, they were cheating or lying.
Now, I've enjoyed a respectable amount
of success so far, not as much as I want,
I've got goals that I haven't got any idea
how I'm going to get there.
But I know I'm going to get there.
And I've made all kinds of mistakes.
But you know something, I've always kept going.
I just keep going.
I keep going, I keep going.
And every time I feel like quitting,
I think of the time that I locked myself
in my living room, closed all the curtains
and sat there for a month, feeling sorry for me.
I don't like feeling sorry for myself,
it doesn't bring on a good feeling.
I like to feel good about myself.
And I feel good about myself when I know I'm giving it
the best shot I've got.
And that's what I want to suggest you do.
Feel your way to success.
Go on out and do it.
Go blow it.
Go on, fit.
I guarantee it, you're going to wake up one day.
And you're going to be in a lot of money,
and you're going to feel really good about you
and somebody's going to say,
"How did you become so succesful?"
You'll say, "You know I'm glad you asked me.
"Let me tell you a real sad story,
"in fact, I've got about 500 of them I want to share with you.
"'Cause that's how I got here."
And that's how you're going to get there.
Fail your way to success.
Just like that.