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NEVER WORK A DAY
worried about the location, the old building, the small attendance, or even my lack of experience. I was filled with passion. I wanted to help people.
Following your passion is the key to finding your potential.
Over the next several months, my passion spread to the community. The church began to fill up on Sundays.
Momentum was increasing, and I could sense that it was time to really stretch the congregation. So I challenged them to set an attendance goal of 300 people on the first Sunday in October. Though all the members were willing to help, most of them felt that the goal was unreachable. Our small building seated only 100 people, our tiny parking lot held only thirty-three cars, and the highest attendance in the church’s history had been 135 people.
In spite of the odds, everyone gave it their best. We invited everyone we knew. When the day finally arrived, excitement mounted as people kept coming onto the property. Many could not even get into the building. Right before I was scheduled to speak, the lay leader announced the attendance: “Today we have 299 people.”
The people cheered. It was beyond their greatest expectations, far exceeding anything they had ever done before. But I was not satisfied. With perhaps more passion than wisdom, I stood up and asked, “What was our goal for today?”
“Three hundred,” the crowd responded.
“Well, if 300 was our goal,” I declared, “then 300 is how many we will have. You sing a few more songs, and I will go out and find one more person. Then we will finish the service.”
As I strode down the aisle toward the door, the people cheered wildly and patted me on the back. I was pumped. It felt like I was going through the team’s tunnel out into the stadium for the Super Bowl—until I found myself outside. My enthusiasm had taken me into new territory.
“Now what am I going to do?” I asked myself. I was faced with the reality of the task before me.
I looked and saw two men sitting in front of the service station across the street: Sandy Burton, the owner, and Glenn Harris, who worked for him. I walked over to them.
“Did you reach your goal?” Sandy asked before I even finished crossing the road. Everyone in the county knew about it.
“Not yet,” I replied. “We have 299 people over there,” I said pointing back toward the church. “I need one more person to attend the church for us to meet our goal. Which one of you would like to be the hero for this entire valley?”
They looked at each other and Sandy said, “We both would!”
Sandy put a “closed” sign on the door of his service station, and the three of us walked over to the church. When we entered the building, the place exploded. What everyone wanted but no one expected had actually come to pass.
CREATING A BREAKTHROUGH
The people in that small town in southern Indiana changed that day. And so did I. We had accomplished the impossible.
That evening as I reflected on the day, I realized that passion was what took us to the next level. The power of passion had made the difference. It took a significant event and turned it
into an unforgettable one. It caused me to take action in a way that I would not have ordinarily done. It motivated two men who never attended church to attend. It created a win for a group of people that improved their self-image and boosted their confidence. It was a day in which all of us became aware that our potential was much greater than we had thought.
“Don’t put live eggs under dead chickens.”
—Howard Hendricks
When a person doesn’t have passion, life can become pretty monotonous. Everything is a “have to” and nothing is a “want to.” We feel like little Eddie whose grandmother loved opera and had season tickets every year. When Eddie turned eight, his grandmother decided it was time to take him with her, so she did for his birthday present. She beamed as Eddie squirmed through the entire performance of a somber German opera—
sung in German!
The next day, Eddie’s mother told him to write a thank-you note to his grandmother. Here is what it said:
Dear Grandmother,
Thank you for the birthday present. It is what I always wanted, but not very much.
Love, Eddie Passion is an incredible asset for any person, but especially for leaders. It keeps us going when others quit. It becomes contagious and influences others to follow us. It pushes us through the toughest of times and gives us energy we did not know we possessed. It fuels us in ways that the following assets can’t:
Talent . . . is never enough to enable us to reach our potential. There are many people in the world with great
natural talent who never achieve personal or professional success. I feel so strongly about this that I wrote an entire book about it called Talent Is Never Enough. To be a successful leader—to be a successful person—you need more than just talent.
Opportunity . . . will never get us to the top by itself.
Opportunities may open the door, but the success journey is often long and difficult. 7Without the passion that sustains when times get tough, people don’t make the most of their opportunities and they never reach their potential. As my friend Howard Hendricks says, “Don’t put live eggs under dead chickens.” That’s what opportunities are to people without passion.
Knowledge . . . can be a great asset, but it won’t make us
“all we can be.” Being smart doesn’t make someone a leader.
Neither does possessing credentials or college degrees. Some of America’s worst presidents are reputed to have been the smartest. Some of the greatest, such as Abraham Lincoln, had very little formal education. Formal education doesn’t make you a leader. I possess three college degrees including a doctorate, but I believe they have contributed very little to my success as a leader.
A great team . . . can fall short. It’s true that leaders cannot be successful without a good team. But having a good team does not guarantee success. A team with no heart and fuzzy leadership won’t succeed. Besides, if a team starts out strong but has a weak, passionless leader, the team will eventually become weak and passionless. As the Law of Magnetism says in The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership,“We attract who we are, not who we want.”
What does a leader need to succeed? Passion. Passion is a
real difference-maker. It separates the extraordinary from the ordinary. When I think back on my career, I recognize that passion has enabled me to do the following:
Believe things I would not have believed Feel things I would not have felt
Attempt things I would not have attempted Accomplish things I would not have accomplished Meet people I would not have met
Motivate people I would not have motivated Lead people I would not have led
Passion has made an incredible difference in my life. As former GE CEO Jack Welch says, “The world will belong to passionate, driven leaders . . . people who not only have enormous amounts of energy, but who can energize those whom they lead.” In all my years of observing people, I have yet to meet an individual who reached his potential but didn’t possess passion.
FORGET THE MONEY—FOLLOW YOUR PASSION In his book Mak ing a Life, Mak ing a Living, Mark Albion writes about a revealing study of businesspeople who took two very different paths after graduating from college. Here is what he says:
A study of business school graduates tracked the careers of 1,500 people from 1960 to1980. From the beginning, the graduates were grouped into two categories. Category A consisted of people who said they wanted to make money first so that they could do what they really wanted to do later—after they had taken care of their financial concerns. Those in Category B pursued their true interests first, sure that the money would eventually follow.
What percentage fell into each category?
Of the 1,500 graduates in the survey, the money-now Category A’s comprised 83 percent, or 1,245 people. Category B risk takers made up 17
percent, or 255 graduates.
After twenty years there were 101 millionaires in the group. One came from Category A, 100 from Category B.
The study’s author, Srully Blotnick, concluded that “ the overwhelming majority of people who have become wealthy have become so thanks to work they found profoundly absorbing. . . . Their ‘luck’ arose from the accidental dedication they had to an area they enjoyed.”1
When people pursue what they are truly passionate about, it makes all the difference. Passion fills them with energy and desire. It gives them the will to win. And as writer David Ambrose says, “If you have the will to win, you have achieved half of your success. If you don’t, you have achieved half of your failure.” If you want to reach your potential, find your passion.
“The world will belong to passionate, driven leaders . . . people who not only have enormous amounts of energy, but who can energize those whom they
lead.”
—Jack Welch
I believe I have been fortunate because my passion has been my calling and career. Way back at Hillham, I discovered the connection between passion and potential. For almost forty years I have lived off of the energy that comes from loving what I do and doing what I love.
To most people, there’s a big difference between work and play. Work is what they have to do to earn a living so that someday they can do what they want to do. Don’t live your life that way! Choose to do what you love and make the necessary adjustments to make it work in your life. Follow the advice of Confucius, who said, “Choose work you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.” The greatest job is one where you’re not sure where the line is between work and play.