Steve Travis, Director of Sales and Business Development for Hartmann Foods, a Snoqualmie, Washington-headquartered distributor and importer of fruits and asparagus, had earlier sent in a quote from Colin Powell that we used in our Perishable Thoughts section.
We owe Steve another hat tip for sending along this quote:
“Without a sense of urgency, desire loses its value.”
— Jim Rohn
The Treasury of Quotes
1994
This quotation can be viewed here:
In the Vitamins for the Mind section of www.jimrohn.com
It is the fifth quotation under DESIRE/MOTIVATION
This quotation can be purchased here:
The Treasury of Quotes
By Jim Rohn
Jim Rohn International, 2001
124 pages
We find this quote a little perplexing. Jim Rohn is famous as a particular type of motivational speaker who famously says one must first educate and only then motivate. Otherwise he points out you wind up with motivated idiots, which is pointless.
He also is intriguing because he suggests a focus on the person, not the job. His mantra is that one doesn’t earn success, that through personal development one becomes a person worthy of success, and it is those qualities that attract success.
What we take this to mean is that desire not coupled with urgency is something of a fraud. It reminds one of the famous line from St. Augustine’s Confessions: da mihi castitatem et continentam, sed noli modo, or “Oh, Master, make me chaste and celibate — but not yet!’
Another well known Rohn quote ties it all together in these times of economic difficulty:
“The major key to your future is YOU; it’s not the economy, not prices in the marketplace, not the government or even taxes.’
If you truly desire success and achievement, you don’t allow excuses. The world always has opportunities, and if one desires, truly desires, to realize one’s potential, the statistics on the gross national product are just background noise.
In our family business, we never started any venture where it would have been important to get 100% of the market. So if we started importing honeydews, so what if the volume was going to be down for total imports? We still had an opportunity to make it a big success for us.
That may be the key. You are in foodservice and foodservice sales are down. Well, maybe foodservice sales being down is a big problem for Sysco, but for an entrepreneurial purveyor selling from the back of a van, why worry about national trends? The direction for your own business is clear, and the only mistake would be to lose the sense of urgency that gives one’s desire to succeed all its impetus and value.
Many thanks to Steve Travis for sending this quote along.
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Perishable Thoughts is a regular section of the Perishable Pundit. If you have a favorite quote that you would like to share with the industry, please send it on. You can do so right here.
