A Business Success Motivation Story
Tell me if you’ve heard this story. So I had a voice teacher in New York City. Little old man, probably 80 years old, maybe older, nobody knows exactly how old Jack is and his references are basically the Yoda of musical theatre in New York City. He’s worked with Gene Kelly and Chita Rivera. Like, you name it, he’s been around forever.
I was going to auditions and stuff and people would go, “Oh, Jimmy. I want to work with your voice teacher!” and I’d go, “No, you don’t.”
Well, I’d say, “Let me ask. I really don’t think you do. Do you need to feel good every time you leave a lesson?”
“Oh, yeah. Of course! You want to feel better!”
“Then you don’t want to work with my guy.”
Because I would bring in my sheet music and we’d talk about the song. It wasn’t that we’d just sing scales. We’d talk…what the song’s about? Who are they talking to?
Okay? The song is ‘I’ll Buy You a Star’ and it’s this really broke guy and he’s telling this woman, “Look, I don’t have any money, but I’m going to give you the world. Just trust me.”
So we go through this whole thing. “Okay, you got it?” “Yeah, cool.”
“I’ll buy you a…”
“No! Shut up, Jimmy!”
Like he wouldn’t let me finish! “Why aren’t you telling the story?”
I’m like, “But I was just starting…”
“There was nothing honest about that! You are talking to that girl. You were listening to yourself sing because you think you sing pretty. God damn it. We’re not doing this song!”
And the slammed the piano down. I’d come back over and we’d talk about it some more.
“So, where is this guy?”
“He’s here and okay.”
“I’ll buy you a…”
“No!” and he would continue to stop me. I would leave and Kelly would go, “How was the lesson today?”
“I’m the worst singer in New York City. It pisses me off. This sucks!”
I would just come out home and be like, “It was bad…” Then all of a sudden, I’d start getting called back for stuff and I was starting to work more and the things that I just can’t nail in this lesson are showing up in auditions and they’re showing up when the pressure’s on. When I don’t have time to think and it’s just reacting.
What that has to do with any of this is I look back and I am where I am today because I’ve always been surrounded by pushers, but here’s the caveat, I gave them permission to push.
At one point, all of you in this room have given me that permission. We haven’t always been friends, but that’s not my job. I am friends with you and I want to be friends, but my responsibility to you is to help you build what it is that you’re telling me that you want and sometimes there’s some friction there.
It’s, “Okay, you say this, but this is not what I see.”
I like to be pushed and I like to be called out when I’m not doing what I say I have. Do I have that permission with you? Which he said yes and it goes back to expectation with your leaders and with your brand new coaches. You can say with a smile on your face, you don’t have to be a Drill Sergeant all the time.
We all have our own way of doing that, but I do feel like that I’ve lacked in the past that now I have to do is setting expectations.
If they don’t let me push, it’s the equivalent of when Chalene talks about them getting out of your car. They may be a Coach on my team, they may stick around, but we’re never going to go where I want to go with them. They’re probably not going to be at a retreat like this because I want to have these conversations.
I mean, everybody that comes on, I want them to take the whole path to here. This is where I want everybody to end up. You guys are the 0.0001%.
Let’s think about this for a second. A team of, I don’t know what the last call was. 3,500 Coaches? We don’t have a huge team for 8 years of this, not a huge gigantic team, but 3,500 people (or around there somewhere), and you guys are in the room and only a couple of you are my best Coaches.
That’s such a small number. More people aren’t than are and that’s all. When you find that person that gives you that permission, hell yeah you’re going to get my time! As long as when I push and we go back and forth and take the next step together. We may be yelling at each other and pulling each other’s hair a little bit, but as long as we’re taking the next step together, let’s keep going.