In High School I was a straight D student.
My senior year I nearly flunked out. I didn’t get to go to my graduation because I had to go to summer school to get the 1/2 credit I needed to graduate.
I spent most of my four years in High School either suspended, skipping, or in the deans office getting yelled at.
If you asked my teachers they would tell you I was a troubled kid that would likely end up in jail or lying in the street dead.
No one believed I would ever amount to anything.
And after hearing that enough times I started to believe it too.
When I finally got out of school I did the only thing I was qualified to do, hard labor in the scorching hot Florida sun working construction.
Luckily I was smart enough to get a skilled job as an electrician’s apprentice.
My first job was at Disney building the GM Test Track.
They paired me up with a journeyman from Boston named Doug. He took me under his wing and taught me everything he could.
He was a kind man. He let me get my hands dirty while I learned and I loved every second of it.
That job was the first time I felt like I wasn’t a total screw up.
It energized me and I set about learning everything I could form all the journeymen I worked with.
I went from a total loser to an overachiever and I always craved to learn more.
I learned about bending pipe (which takes geometry knowledge)
I learned about running wire and voltage drops (which takes algebra knowledge)
I learned about showing up everyday and getting my job done because the team was counting on me.
Over the nine years I was an electrician I moved up from being a grunt with a shovel to being the guy that ran jobs and built electrical rooms.
To this day I am grateful to all the journeyman who believed in me, trained me, and shaped me into the best electrician I could be.
And there’s a little lesson in here if you look for it.
For ages the skilled trades have passed down their craft by having a mentor and mentee relationship.
One guy has been working on his craft for decades and begins to master it, then he takes on an apprentice and shares his wisdom with the new guy to short cut his learning.
It’s like that in business too.
You get in knowing nothing and you can either take years to figure things out all by yourself or you can work with a mentor to shortcut your learning so you can be more effective quicker.
How about you, are you looking for a short cut to increasing your authority in your marketplace so you can build better relationships and make more sales?
In the last 12 years I’ve worked with some of the brightest marketers on the planet and I’ve picked up a thing or two from them.
It’s likely I can help you there quicker.
But you don’t have to take my word for it.
Nope, I’d rather you hear it from the people I've worked with at http://thepodcastfactory.com/testimonials
And if you’re ready to shortcut your authority then you can use the link at the bottom of that page to take your next step.
Until next time,
Producer Jonathan
