Today's Business Lessons
What makes champions
(The Philippine Star) | Updated April 27, 2014
Who are the real champions?
The real champions are not the ones who never fail, but the ones who never quit.
In 1962, four nervous young musicians played their first record
audition for the executives of the Decca recording company. The
executives were not impressed. While turning down this group of
musicians, one executive said, “We don’t like their sound. Groups of
guitars are on the way out.” The group was called The Beatles. Did they
give up? No they didn’t.
In 1944, Emmeline Snively, director of the Blue Book Modelling
Agency, told modeling hopeful Norma Jean Baker, “You’d better learn
secretarial work or else get married.” Did she quit? No she didn’t. She
went on and became Marilyn Monroe.
In 1954, Jimmy Denny, manager of the Grand Ole Opry, fired a singer
after one performance. He told him, “You ain’t goin’ nowhere, son. You
ought to go back to drivin’ a truck.” Did he pack up his things and go
home? No he didn’t. He went on to become the most popular singer in
America named Elvis Presley.
Now let’s look at the field of science.
When Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone in 1876, it did not
ring off the hook with calls from potential backers. After making a
demonstration call, President Rutherford Hayes said, “That’s an amazing
invention, but who would ever want to use one of them?” Bell didn’t
quit.
When Thomas Edison invented the light bulb, he tried over 2000
experiments before he got it to work. A young reporter asked him how it
felt to fail so many times. He said, “I never failed once. I invented
the light bulb. It just happened to be a 2000-step process.” That’s the
mark of a true champion.
What about business?
In the 1940s, another young inventor named Chester Carlson took his
idea to 20 corporations, including some of the biggest in the country.
They all turned him down. In 1947 – after seven long years of
rejections! – he finally got a tiny company in Rochester, New York, the
Haloid Company, to purchase the rights to his invention – an
electrostatic paper-copying process. Haloid became the Xerox Corporation
we know today.
Let’s try sports this time.
Wilma Rudolph was the 20th of 22 children. She was born prematurely
and her survival was doubtful. When she was four years old, she
contacted double pneumonia and scarlet fever, which left her with a
paralyzed left leg. At age nine, she removed the metal leg brace she had
been dependent on and began to walk without it. By 13 she had developed
a rhythmic walk, which doctors said was a miracle. That same year she
decided to become a runner. She entered a race and came in last. For the
next few years every race she entered, she came in last.
Everyone told her to quit, but she kept on running. One day she
actually won a race. And then another. From then on she won every race
she entered. Eventually this little girl, who was told she would never
walk again, went on to win three Olympic gold medals. Now that’s what I
call a real champion.
Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through
experiences of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision
cleared, ambition inspired and success achieved. You gain strength and
confidence by every experience where you really stop to look fear in the
face. You must do the thing you cannot do. And remember, the finest
steel gets sent through the hottest furnace.
Therefore a champion is not one who never fails, but one who never quits.
No wonder the Bible says we are to welcome adversities. Those are the things that create champions as long as we don’t quit.
The word QUIT is a four-letter word that is obscene to the ears of a champion.
These stories are old but they still have to be told. Young people quit too easily but the champions? They don’t!
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