…. each morning my marketing team sends me the blog readership report for the day before and I see a small city in Florida has visited the site again - which makes me very proud….it is my father.
My father…”big slick Joe,” as an old friend used to call him, is a brilliant salesman and a very generous, great person … and whatever experiences I have enjoyed as well as whatever success I have today is because of opportunities he gave me growing up.
I value my fathers opinion very much.
So the other day… I was excitedly telling him how recently, over 5,000 people a day are reading the blog…and I boasted to him about how a major global finance newspaper has contacted us to do a story on me and the blog and I have a meeting with them in Paris at the end of the month….
I said to him, “I see you are a loyal reader- thanks…..”
and he said coldly, “yea, I read your blog, but I disagree with a lot of it…”
(he told me that he esp. did not like my last “where is John Galt” and my negative comments about CNN and Billary)
he then suggested that I should focus the blog as a tool for helping develop, mold, create sales armies…. and not talk about politics and my thoughts on misinformation in the media, etc.
He made a great point - and ideally, the focus of this blog.
In fact, the only reason I use so much of myself, my experiences and any negative examples of myself is because being a great sales person is a lot more than just selling - its also about being consistent and focused.
We can all be great at something once or twice…but fail in the long run if we are not consistent.
A great example is my french … I speak french well, but not as fluently as I should… I am not consistent in my studies….
I use my mistakes/experiences all the time in this blog as the ultimate example … of the way NOT to do it.
This blog also helps me stay on track — and reflect on my own consistency and focus.
But dad!!! sometimes it is hard for me not to comment on the absurdities in the media… I feel a duty to dispel any misinformation and/or all the negative bull shit that I have personally witnessed that could potentially stop someone from visiting or experiencing another country or culture. Especially all the negative press in America my Arab brothers and sisters get…
The suggestion I made about more people getting mugged, raped, murdered and robbed a week in Miami than in Tehran and Damascuss together… I am sure I am right. I am not bashing america … just trying to point out that the rest of the world is not as black and dangerous as CNN makes it look.
…and just maybe… one person reading this blog somewhere in Idaho, Iowa or Nebraska, who has been scared away from visiting the Great Wall in China, the Kremlin in Moscow, Petra in Jordan or the pyramids in Egypt by negative misinformation in the news… will rise above the negativity and go and adventure…. and touch the pyramids or climb on the great wall…visit the unbelievable Angkor Wat in Cambodia…as well as hopefully, vote for Obama…
Robert Frost said it best… “two roads diverged in a wood and I took the one less traveled by and that has made all the difference…”
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