>You have never had a failure to end up in a better position?
Of course I have. If all you remember me talking about is one success after another, you are not remembering the failure part of the stories I write. Setbacks is the more accurate term.
Most of the time, Broompilot, not all of the time, but most of the time, I succeed in what I set out to do. The reason is I have a pretty good idea of what I am trying to accomplish (clearly defined, written goals) and I do not quit when mistakes are made and setbacks occur. I am also not afraid to try something new. And I am self-confident (arrogant) enough to believe I can succeed.
The clearest example of how that plays out in my life is the Jesse Ventura internet thing. (This does relate to expedting success, so bear with me as I tell the story. Since RichM brought up the Jesse thing, I'll continue the theme.).
Having never done a web site before, I volunteered to do one for the Jesse Ventura for Minnesota Governor campaign in 1998. The fact that I did not know how to do a web site did not matter to me. I believed I could learn. The fact that there was no money to pay for a web site did not matter either. I figured I could overcome that obstacle too.
Note that while I knew absolutely nothing about developing web sites at the time, I went ahead and declared myself to be a webmaster. It was not a declaration of what I then was. It was a declaration of what I had committed myself to become.
The word "delcare" is important here. I use it in the very same way America's founding fathers used it when they signed the Declaration of Independence. On the day they signed it, they declared America to be free. They did not mean that America was that day free. They meant they had committed themselves to making America free.
The word "committed" is also important. I did not make a casual committment. I made the kind of committment the founding fathers made. "And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor."
From work done before, Jesse knew me as a trusted and results-producing friend. Once he gave me the nod, my very next step was to set goals for the web site. I wrote them down to keep me and others on track. The goals were to produce volunteers, money and votes for Jesse Ventura and Mae Schunk (his running mate).
While I did not set specific numbers of volunteers, money and votes, these were quantifiable goals. As the web site and our audience grew, I would be able to tell if our volunteer and money count was rising or falling. The votes number would have to wait until the November election.
Note my focus here. The goals I did not set were as important as the ones I did. I did not set goals to have the coolest looking site, the most technologically advanced site, the most politically correct site or even the heaviest traffic site. I was laser focused on producing three things....volunteers, money and votes.
It mattered not a bit to me that internet geeks would ridicule me when they saw my primitive and backward site. I was not online to promote me. I was online to promote Jesse Ventura and Mae Schunk in a very specific way...a way that would produce volunteers, money and votes.
With clear goals set, the next step was to learn how to do a web site. That was easy. Not needing to know anything more than the basics (remember the goals I did not set), I purchased web development software that was designed for web-ignorant people like me (Microsoft FrontPage).
A few hours after bringing it home, I had a real-live, one-page web site up on the internet. That was a breakthrough moment for me. I ran upstairs, brought Diane back down to my home office, pointed to monitor and proudly said, "Honey! look what I did!" She smiled politely and went back upstairs to continue her reading.
Anyone with even a thimble full of web development knowledge would have said, "You're proud of that?" But I was, because I saw past the pathetic looking web page to the whole new world the internet was and the incredible potential I could now access with my keyboard.
I took some serious heat from certain geeks that became jealous of my position and/or had strongly-held views about what a web site should look like and how "real" webmasters don't use FrontPage. Some of them grouped together and talked among themselves about the things that were wrong with me. One even took proactive action to get me banished from the campaign.
That criticism affected me no more than rain affects a duck. I was focused on producing volunteers, money and votes. While some of it was unpleasant, I passed off the criticism as background noise and did not let it distract me from my goals.
Fast forward to November, 2008. Jesse Ventura's third-party election vicory shocked the world. I did not know it, but in terms of volunteers, money and votes, no one in the world had ever before produced the online political results I had.
I also did not know that some very important people in some very important circles were paying very close attention to how this new communications technology, the internet, was being used in American politics. Remember, in 1998, the internet was still an emerging technology.
After the election, I was invited to Harvard University to speak about what I did and how I did it. All the bigs were there; national reporters, top political activists from inside the Washington beltway, major-university schoolars and others.
Whle I was one of several pannelists that spoke, the people absolutely loved and zeroed in on the story I told...no previous experience, total web site expense of $600, and results that every polictal operative would love to have.
Having reviewed all other political internet activity of the 2008 campaign season, these people declared that the Jesse Ventura was the first major campaign to make effective use of the internet, and that the techniques I developed were instrumental in the victory.
In Feburary, 2008, I opened a newly-purchased box of software and sat down in front of my computer to do my first-ever web page. Nine months later, I was a world-renowned expert on using the internet for political gain. For the next year, I was the man of the hour at speaking events and in news shows and articles about political use of the internet.
While those were fun days, I knew they would not last even as they were happening. I was not willing to move to Washington, which is what it would have taken to capitalize on my success. I was not in politics to make it into the beltway. I was in politics to make a difference.
A few years later, I reached my limit with politics, eased out of it, and sought more routine jobs in the technology sector. With only entry-level technology skills to offer, it was time to make a declaration once again. That is another story which did not end in failure, but did not amount to much before trucking interrupted us and later came into our lives.
Now, lets take some of these story elements and apply them to the expediting success Diane and I now enjoy, and the expediting success I believe other declaration-oriented people can also have.
Before a friend gave us a ride in a big truck, it had never entered our minds to become truck drivers, but the ride got us thinking about it. After several months if industry research, and after discovering expediting via the EO booth at the Mid America Truck Show in 2003, we knew expediting was for us.
Same story, different field of endeavor.
Having no experience whatsoever in expediting, and having never driven a truck before, we DECLARED ourselves to be expediters. It did not matter that we did not know how to do it. We had enough self-confidence (arrogance) to believe we could figure it out.
Making the delcaration did not instantly put CDL's in our pockets and turn us into expediters. It did set in stone a personal committment to become expediters.
As we continued our reasearch one of the very next things we did was to set clearly defined goals. They were to (1) increase our income, (2) simplify our lives, (3) spend more time together, (4) share in a business project, and (5) see the country.
Goals 2, 3, and 4 would pretty much take care of themselves when we started living and working in a truck. Goals 1 and 5 led us to FedEx Custom Critical White Glove Services(r). From our research, we knew that White Glove drivers are among the highest paid in the expediting industry (goal 1), and that FedEx Custom Critcial runs freight in 49 states and Canada (goal 5).
With that discovery made, we set an intermediate goal to become White Glove drivers. Notice again, the goals we did not set. We did not set out to become cool cowboy boot wearing truck drivers that talk trucking jargon the CB. We did not set out to be the best of the best (whatever that may mean). We did not set out to have the biggest, baddest truck out there or to collect truck show trophies. We did not set out to be well-liked or popular among truckers. We set out to achieve five very specific goals that we chose for our own personal reasons.
As in the Ventura campaign, expediters who had more experience than us and/or had strongly held opinions about what "real" expediters should and should not be doing criticized us. Some tried to convince us to give up. Some tried to oust us from EO. . As before, while some of the criticism was unpleasant, we dismissed it as background noise and remained focused on our goals.
Fast forward to today. Compared to jobs we had before, we found expediting to be the easiest, most lucrative and most fun work we have ever done. Because we were COMMITTED to becoming the expediters we DECLARED ourselves to be, it was easy for us to find our way into the groove. We did not argue with the industry. We did not argue with the freight. We figured out what it takes to succeed as expediters and changed anything and everything in our lives that kept us from doing so.
Have we had failures as expediters? One could say that, but I don't. A setback only becomes a failure when you quit. Maybe the reason I don't write about failure in this business is because I don't consider a setback to be a failure. In my mind, a setback is not a failure. It is a challenge to overcome. And since we have overcome every challenge we have faced as expediters, there are only setbacks, not failures to write about.
Like you, Broompilot, I did not know that trying to do one thing (produce volunteers, money and votes for Ventura/Schunk, or earning $150,000 a year as expediters) would lead to something so much bigger (world-renowned expert, or earning much more than we first thought possible). But it did.
Such things do not happen because you or I were lucky. They happen because, when an opportunity arose, you and I stood prepared to sieze it. Like you, Broompilot, we do not quit. And like you, supprisingly good results came to be.
So what does this mean for others who wish to succeed as expediters but have never driven a truck before? It means:
1. Declare yourself to be what you want to become.
2. Set clear and specific goals, and write them down.
3. Commit to those goals the way the founding fathers committed to their country.
4. Take action as if you really meant what you said when you made your declaration and set your goals.
5. Be open to the possibility that things may turn out grander for you than you ever imagined.
