Avoid the Clichés this Father’s Day

Although known for being a world class comedian, my father was the consummate pragmatist. His ability to blend the bitter with the sweet echoed in many people’s hearts because that’s truly the essence of life. While some fathers raised their daughters by consistently heaping praise on them about how beautiful they were and how they could become anything they wanted, I received much more practical advice. Here’s the best of the best!

Earn Your Stripes! Dad used to tell the story about the young salesman who asked the old-timer how he had managed to be so successful. The old-timer replied “Good Judgment”. The young man then asked, “Well, how do you get good judgment?” The old-timer replied, “Experience”. The young man, eager to learn all he could, pressed on, “Well, how do you get experience?” To which the old man replied, “Poor judgment.” The road to success entails a lot of required failures. The only way to get promoted through the ranks is to do the grunt work.

Be Happy Miserable! I learned much while traveling to meetings with my father.  There was a recurring routine we used to do while I was still little enough for him to hold me in his arms. At the end of a speech he’d call me up on stage and say, “Tracey, how are you?” And I’d say “Tremendous!” And then he’d ask, “How are things going?” And I’d say, “I hope things don’t get any better!” and he’d say “Why?” And I’d exclaim “Because I’m so tired of being happy it’s wearing me out!!!” Life’s tough; it’s tougher if you don’t have a positive attitude.

Quit Thumb-Sucking! When I would call my father lamenting about the nonsense I had to endure at my job he’d interrupt “You can either work for someone else, or you can work for yourself. As long as someone else is your boss, this will always happen.” The second thing he would say when I would angst over how hurtful the slander, the betrayal, and malice, was “Do you think that what you are going through is a fraction of the pain and suffering Christ endured?” Followed up by the ever popular, “You’re never a failure until you blame somebody else!”

It’s Not About You! Two things I heard over and over again growing up really helped me avoid showing up at my own pity party. First, my Dad used to say, “Things don’t go wrong and break your heart so you can become bitter and give up. They happen to break you down and build you up so you can be all that you were intended to be.” So how could I bellyache about a trial or tribulation that was actually the fire designed to forge me into something stronger?

So what kind of a father did you have? With the alarming rate of absentee fathers, it makes me think about all of the girls who won’t get the chance to even interact with their fathers. Whether you’re a laid-back nurturer or a “tough love” kind of dad matters not. What’s important is that you impart your wisdom and presence. Because believe me, it makes all the difference in the world.

 

complaining won’t fill your till

As a writer, publisher, and book purveyor, I always read literary news with great interest. I’ve been in the military, high tech, and government contracting, and the world of publishing is just as volatile and crazy as any of them. Yesterday, an article on the web complained that Amazon was destroying Britain’s book industry through its rock-bottom pricing, ruthless corporate behavior, and grotesquely unfair tax arrangements.

So what’s your point? Welcome to life on Earth. Corporations are ruthless, life isn’t fair, and if you aren’t pricing everything as competitively as possible you won’t be running your business for long. When I worked in semiconductor manufacturing, it was obvious that factories outsourced to lower-cost regions to get that rock-bottom pricing; and when I was in government contracting I saw some pretty ruthless corporate behavior.

You must react to changes in your industry sooner rather than later. Pretending it’s not going to happen is not an option, yet we do this all the time. For all our claims that flexibility is the key to airpower, human beings will always loathe change. If something is radically changing in your industry (and it always is) do something differently than you’ve done it before. Repeat this cycle every day of every month of every year as long as you are breathing. And ruthless behavior, not just in corporations, is a fact of life. Only you have the power to decide how much ruthlessness you are going to expose yourself to.

How can I attract more business aside from calling my competitors jackasses? We’ve all heard of the ‘Law of Attraction’, yet you’d think everyone had a Ph.D. in the ‘Law of Repulsion’! Stop telling me how horrible your adversary is. All’s fair in love and war and ESPECIALLY in business. Don’t tell me what the other person is doing wrong, fill my head with all the things you are doing right and what that means to me! Just because you say a competitor sucks, that doesn’t make me feel drawn to you any more than insisting that my political party is corrupt makes me want to switch sides. I’m too busy being creative to worry about how to ‘dis’ my opponent. Imagine if we all engaged in conversations where we were actually passionate about what we believed in instead of spewing out hate about the opposition.

Books are sacred. They aren’t ordinary objects like TVs or even fighter jets. If you can hold it in your hand, you can keep it in your heart. And yes, you can buy our books on Amazon. But if I haven’t convinced you why you should stop by our website or call and order directly from us, than I’ve got no one to blame but myself. So stop competing and start achieving! Stop complaining and start promoting! And for God’s sake, stop pointing at the problem and start being a part of the solution!

hello mountain, it’s me muhammad

The Charlie “T” Jones Conference Center

If the mountain will not come to Muhammad, Muhammad will come to the mountain. Life is all about making a series of decisions designed to move you closer to your goals; decisions that often involve seeking out alternative routes to get you to your final destination. My father, Charlie “Tremendous” Jones, joked, “Plan on everything going wrong. If something does go right, we’ll just have to work that in!”

Like every other living, thinking person on this planet, I get up every day looking for ways to further my professional mission. I try lots of different things, plan on them all going wrong, change it up a bit, and pray a lot. This strategy kept our business steady and even on a sustained growth pattern for the last four years. Life is good, but good just isn’t good enough anymore. There’s got to be a better, more concentrated strategy out there that we just haven’t discovered.

For several years, I’ve mulled over various usage options for our vacant warehouse space. My inner child had dreams of an indoor putt-putt facility, go-carts, and bumper cars; even a year-round haunted house spooktacular. But alas, I just couldn’t link that directly to our core mission. I had even considered a flea market since our founder was such a lover of collecting antiquities and books of all types. However, nothing led this opportunity to fruition materialize either.

All this was going through my mind as I was still working at building our clientele base, going out and speaking, giving away books, and hosting various events at our current facility. That’s when the idea of a state-of-the-art conference center was born. Rather than go out and sing the praises of how books can transform the life of an organization, why not build a leadership annex where I could bring the entrepreneurs, chambers of commerce, and business people in so I could actually show them!

Rather than put a link on our site about how we funnel our profits to ten tremendous organizations via the Books for Tremendous Living Foundation,  why not open up a gorgeous area where these groups could come and conduct events educating people in our area about ways they can get involved and help their neighbors!

Rather than trying to get booked into high-dollar venues, why not have intimate settings where attendees can learn sales techniques from Jeffrey Gitomer; how to write books from Mark Sanborn; how to become a speaker from Don Hutson; and how to combine your faith with your profession from Naomi Rhode?

So the planning process began, and we started setting aside the money and reviewing architectural drawings. After years of trial and error and due diligence, the groundbreaking will commence on June 3^rd, 2013. All systems are finally go! And while I’m still assuming everything will go wrong, I do know I’m moving that mountain one step closer. And in life, that’s all that matters. Check out our tremendous progress on our website and watch it all come together!

exposure to experience

A bird left the safety of its home to fly and perch on the branch of a different tree. It doesn’t fear leaving the old and taking up residence in the new because it doesn’t put its faith in the strength of the branch upon which it roosts. If the branch should break, the strength of its own wings will keep it aloft.

I’ve had some major limbs break out from under me, both personally and professionally. In each case I had left the old to live in the new with great optimism and hope. Sometimes I felt the branch beginning to give way soon after I arrived. Other times I had no idea I was truly out on a limb until the bottom fell out. In either case, I not only survived but flew off to the next branch as a result of the wings of my experiences.

One of leadership’s most powerful laws is Exposure to Experience: the more you know, the more you grow. The more you go down, the more you grow up. The more beaten down you are, the stronger you become. My father, the late, great Charlie “Tremendous” Jones, wrote about this in his motivational classic, Life Is Tremendous. He used to tell me when I was younger that I need to “earn my stripes” and that good judgment came from experience which was the direct result of poor judgment.

He also said that we are all born with an empty psychological key ring attached to our side and every experience, good, bad, or indifferent, gave us another key with which to unlock the doors of life’s journey. The more keys the better. So believe in yourself enough to truly know that any experience in which you give your all will enable you to reach heights you never thought you could.

a letter to my managers

We often read poignant letters from a parent to a child, an elder to a junior, a husband to a wife. These heartfelt notes contain the most important pieces of wisdom each individual gleaned over the course of a lifetime. But did you know that these can be just as effective when pouring out your professional passions to your work family?

I literally work to make the world a better place. That is my professional calling, to live tremendously and to help others to do the same. In order to accomplish this, I need a team as committed to and passionate about leaving this world a better place as I am. My father taught me that it is so much better if someone reads and thinks something for themselves versus having someone “tell” it to them. I often get questions from leaders across the world, in all different settings, asking what they can do to motivate their managers.

There are three little pamphlets so full of life-changing wisdom that I guarantee if you read these and incorporate their teachings, not only will your professional life change, but your personal life will too.

Here are the three things, and the three reading recommendations, I want to share with managers and I dare not wait until my final day at work to do so!

FIRST, I expect you to be a visionary because I expect you to want to grow up in our hierarchy and not just show up. If all you want to do is draw a paycheck, then you are not devoted to this organization’s strategic vision. Vision is simply seeing what needs to be done and doing it. So few managers take any action without their bosses telling them it needs to be done. This is tiring for a leader and will ensure the organization stays stagnant. Please step up and do what needs to be done before I tell you. I know you see it. So act.

Reading Recommendation: The Price of Leadership, by Charlie “Tremendous” Jones

SECOND, I expect you to resolve the difficult issues. I can guarantee you that 99 44/100% of these problems will be related to personnel issues. We all see them; we’re not blind. I can hire a robot to take care of the clerical or manual tasks. I need you to address and resolve the personnel issues. I need you to deal head-on with any issues affecting the professional interaction and development of the team.  I hear so much blame dumped on leaders for the poor performance of their subordinates, when in fact the leaders often have several layers of managers who are paid to deal with these issues. If I have to tell you to take a personnel action, you’re not doing your job as a manager.

Reading Recommendation: The Common Denominator of Success, by Albert E.N. Gray

Third, I expect you to take immediate action when I bring an issue to your attention. I do not expect you to look at me with a puzzled look or to ask “why” or “how”? I expect you to dig into the issue and research it if you are unfamiliar with it or have limited experience in how to resolve it. Find someone who knows or figure it out yourself.  In the eternal words of Elbert Hubbard, I expect you to “Garcia” it. Asking “Why” never worked as a child. Asking “why” or “how” in a professional setting when the boss assigns a job to you can be tantamount to committing career suicide.

Reading Recommendation: A Message to Garcia, by Elbert Hubbard

Disengagement in the workforce is a chronic, global disease. If reading and incorporating these three life-changing classics in your organization doesn’t get your managers engaged in your professional mission, you need to make some serious changes; otherwise, you won’t get there from here. And just to guarantee your success, we’re offering all three of these career-enhancing classics for under $3. It doesn’t get any better than that!

the space between

The space between your ears defines the space between the words. Do you see your present existence as “opportunities nowhere” or as “opportunities now here”?  So many times we lament our current state. Our life’s great passion is complaining about our work, our finances, our relationships. We have opportunities nowhere in sight which justifies our lack of initiative, action and positive attitude. All you have is within you so it’s up to you to define your moment and find that space between.

“The perfect place to begin is exactly where you are right now.” Dieter F. Uchtdorf

For a good time call 1-800-233-BOOK!

I was at an event yesterday beaming with pride as I stood behind the table of life-changing books we published this year. As one individual browsed the table I chimed in with my tremendous elevator pitch about how Tremendous Life Books was the leading publisher of motivational, inspirational, and personal-development material. The browser took a sweeping and critical look across the perfectly-staged books and responded, “Oh, you don’t have any fun ones.”

Interesting; certainly not a response I was expecting. I’ve been called a lot of things in my life, but “not fun” was never one of them. It’s true that we don’t have the bodice-ripping, gun-shooting, car-wrecking, blood-sucking, wand-waving, heavy-breathing fiction that litters the bestseller lists; but we’ve got books written by dogs for crying out loud! How fun is that? We’ve published a plethora of books on the importance of humor in communication. Oscar Wilde said, “If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they’ll kill you.”

You see, I believe that reading is a lot like sex. If you’re not having fun, you’re not doing it right. Forget about the job and the marriage. You’re the only thing you truly have in the world so you’d better learn to have a good time finding ways to make yourself the best and most highly-motivated version of yourself can possibly be! Then, and only then, can you fully enjoy personal and professional relationships to the max.

Hey, I like fiction too. Science fiction is my preferred genre. But I can’t live on it. The fantasy leaves me feeling empty and wanting more when I wake up the next day. Personal development books, on the other hand, make me feel like we’re in a lifelong commitment together. They have meat on their bones and give me something strong to hold on to, not just a good time. They are my soul books and let me know I’m amazing. They say the mind is the sexiest thing on a man or a woman, so why not take some time to work on that and have some real fun!!