Clicky

Search:

Try, Try Again

March 1, 2020 by  
Filed under blog

My beautiful wife, Kimberly, gave me a great book not too long ago. I read it and set it aside but then couldn’t find it, until last week. Yay! The book, by Darcy Andries, is entitled The Secret of Success…It’s Not a Secret.  The book gives the details of the struggles, the setbacks, the failures, and the great losses that many eventually successful and now famous people had. Elvis Presley, Billy Crystal, Michael J. Fox, John Grisham, Tennessee Williams, Colonel Sanders, Andrew Carnegie, Al Pacino, Oprah Winfrey, Walt Disney, Henry Ford, Bob Cousy, Sylvester Stallone, and Robin Williams are just a few of the names from the list Andries gives of over 200 people who were initially rejected and pushed aside, only to come back strong and become super successful.

One name from that big list of super successful people is a guy I know by the name of Richard Paul Evans. He wrote the immensely successful book, The Christmas Box, which sold over 7 million copies. What is so fascinating about Richard’s beginning as an author is that it’s so similar to mine. We both got rejected and turned down by many, many book publishers. Nobody seemed to care or be interested in our books at all.

Both Richard and I did the same thing after all those rejections. We both went to print shops and paid to have our book printed. I printed 1,000 copies of my book and began selling and giving them away. Richard, however, really out did me on that one. He eventually printed 700,000 books – although not all at once – and sold them over time.

The big news was that after we had our own publishing successes, we each had big time New York publishers contact us, eventually getting contracts with them to print and distribute our books to bookstores. Richard’s publisher actually paid $4.2 million for the rights to his book. No, my book deals were not that profitable, but I must say, selling all those books myself did lead me to doing seminars and publishing a newsletter which itself became a huge part of the fortune that I’ve been so blessed to have amassed.

It is so amazing that so very many big time famous names and people had huge struggles when they started but they stuck to the old proverb, “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.” I would add that if you keep trying, and never give up, you will most likely end up with your big dreams coming true.

I think, in the next few weeks, I will share with you some of the stories of these famous people who had big time failures but went on to have super successful lives, people who dug themselves out of a deep hole because they never gave up.

 

The Tragedy is in Not Moving On

September 5, 2014 by  
Filed under blog

Tragedy is a word that none of us are fond of.  But you know what, virtually everyone on this planet has tragedy in their lives and if they haven’t had it yet, it’s almost certainly on the way. I don’t care how rich or how poor a person is, tragedy strikes everyone if they live long enough. We all were certainly shocked a few weeks ago when we saw that the loveable, talented and very successful Robin Williams had died by his own hand. This tragedy, as distant as he may be from most of us, touched so many of us nonetheless.

A couple of weeks ago, while talking to a large audience of really great people, I shared the sad, sad story of the biggest tragedy in my life–the death of my sweet, wonderful, 16 year old daughter, Kristin.  Even though that was many years ago, I’ve learned the hard way that you never get over it–that’s the bad news.  The good news is you can learn how to deal with it in a positive way.

After telling the audience about Kristin and how she died, I asked folks to raise their hands if they had has lost a child.  About 3 or 4% of the group slowly raised their hands.  I wasn’t trying to sadden the mood of the group but I was making a very important point.  That point was that if we as human beings are going to prosper and make the world a better place we must learn how to deal with tragedy since we all have or will have tragedy in our lives.

Too often I have heard people complaining and in essence saying, “Poor me. If you had gone through what I’ve been through you would not be able to do any good and great things for yourself or your family let alone strangers and other people out there.” These people are basically saying that because of their unique tragedy, their lives are over and they’ve given up because they have no choice.  If these people would step back a bit and take a look at the big picture and look beyond the facades that nearly everyone puts on, at least to a degree, they’d see that all of us are in the same boat.   And all of us really do have a choice.  We can learn how to deal with the tragedy and move on with our lives. Many times because of that tragedy we’ve had to work through, we can become better people and can be of greater help to those around us. Face the truth–tragedy strikes everyone and none of us will get out of here alive!

Think about that. And please share this message with others that you see that are in need and have not been able to move on quite yet.