Positively Dirty Job

It is midweek, so another week is on the downhill slide.  Have you achieved what you wanted for early in the week?  I purpose to get up on Mondays with energy and excitement for the week to come. I challenge myself to accomplish the hardest tasks I have first.  If I get some tough challenges behind me then I appreciate the easier tasks even more.  How do you approach a new week?  With excitement or dread.  No matter what you do for a living, all jobs have downsides but hopefully more upsides. 

So I meet Andre, a guy who has a job for which I would have trouble seeing an upside.  He shampoos dirty carpets.  I met him because he came to my house to take care of an especially disgusting job.    My dog had eaten something she shouldn't have.  I woke this morning to quite a big stinky mess all over my carpets.  I called the carpet cleaning company in a panic.  They sent Andre over within a few hours of my call.  He worked feverishly for several hours to get my carpets looking amazing.  He would stop every now and then and ask me to come have a look.  Any tiny spot I found he'd jump right on it and clean some more.  As he was cleaning my stairs his carpet cleaner fell apart.  He taped it back together a few times with duct tape but it was pretty useless.  He said he'd give me a discount for the few stairs he couldn't clean.  I said, "don't worry about it."  Well he couldn't do that.  He then finished up the stairs by hand with a brush.  In the course of a few hours I found out he had a very industrious entrepreneurial spirit.  He contracted for the carpet cleaner in the day and ran a janitorial service in the evenings.  He whistled while he worked up a sweat while cleaning.  He told me of the business books he is reading and of his billionaire mentor.  He said his mentor helped him get into his business because he saw a hardworking, honest man in Andre.   He inspired me to have a better attitude even when I have dirty jobs to take care of.

Next time I need my carpets cleaned you know I will be calling Andre.

The moral of this story is that when you go about your work with a positive attitude, others will want to  hire you again and again.  The positive attitude will make any job pleasant and will rub off on others. 

I have had some great conversations with freight broker students that will be coming to some of our upcoming classes.  I love having a training school.  It is great to see people with great attitudes about learning and growing professionally and personally.

Moving forward,

Jeff Roach
www.transportationtraining.com

BIG Business

What is your BIG motivation to work?  Do you get up every morning excited about the amount of money you will make so you can buy more stuff for you?  Or are you excited because you work for a bigger cause.  I just read on article by David Solomon from Forbes about the owner billionaire of Hobby Lobby, David Green.  His big motivation in building his hobby super enterprise is God, now that’s a big cause.  I believe with a big motivation you will build something bigger than yourself.  Take your focus off of profit and onto how many you can help through your work and you will be more enthusiastic about your day.

Here is the beginning of the article in Forbes by David Green, the Biblical Billionaire

Green has become the largest evangelical benefactor in the world—with plans for unprecedented gifts once he’s in heaven.

Fresh off an inspection of Hobby Lobby’s sprawling 5.5 million-square-foot distribution warehouse in Oklahoma City, the company’s CEO, David Green, retreats to his office in the adjacent executive building, where he surrounds himself with a collection of homely elephant figurines. His coffee table is draped with a bird’s-eye-view photograph of his corporate campus, annotated with scribbles in black marker that show the expansion under way.

When I ask him to walk me through the secrets to his company’s growth, which the aerial plans represent, the 70-year-old, with a full head of white hair, blue eyes and a prominent square jaw, doesn’t take any personal credit. Nor does he laud his executives or his 22,000 employees or his customers, who will gobble up more than $3 billion worth of crafts products from him this year. “If you have anything or if I have anything, it’s because it’s been given to us by our Creator,” says Green, sweeping his hand over the acres laid out before him. “So I have learned to say, ‘Look, this is yours, God. It’s all yours. I’m going to give it to you.’ ”

He means that literally. David Green has one of America’s great, little-known fortunes, having turned a makeshift manufacturing operation in his living room for arts and crafts into a retail monster, with 520 superstores in 42 states. Green and his family own 100% of the company and he ranks No. 79 on our list of the 400 richest Americans, with an estimated net worth of $4.5 billion. Hobby Lobby’s cash spigot currently makes him the largest individual donor to evangelical causes in America.

“I don’t care if you’re in business or out of business, God owns it,” says Green. “How do I separate it? Well, it’s God’s in church and it’s mine here? I have purpose in church, but I don’t have purpose over here? You can’t have a belief system on Sunday and not live it the other six days.”

There are very few members of The Forbes 400 who bring religion to work. Most notable are Chick-fil-A’s Truett Cathy and Forever 21‘s Jin Sook and Do Won Chang, born-again Christians who keep Bibles in their office and print John 3:16 on the bottom of each shopping bag...to read more click here

I am so encouraged by businessmen who live out their convictions.  I know that they are not always popular, but when I look at who is "popular" I'm okay with not being popular.  So I purpose to live and work for a BIG cause today.  How about you?

Moving forward,

Jeff Roach

www.transportationtraining.com