Last week we had our Autumn sales conference in the Westin Hotel in Warsaw. We were privileged to have with us as our guest, Jim Lawless. Jim has recently completed a book entitled “Taming Tigers”. His book is structured around ten rules or actions for taming tigers. A “Tiger” is the metaphor for the “thing that stops us”…it roars at us when we consider doing something that will require us from moving into unknown waters and we always intellectually justify to ourselves all the reason for NOT doing it.

We have all read or heard similar recipes for success, but what’s REALLY cool about Jim, is that much of his thinking is drawn from a real life challenge to him during a conference whereby somebody bet him a pound, that he could not become a jockey within 12 months and ride in a professional race, and at 37 years old, he wasn’t called slim Jim either! Against almost impossible odds, Jim won his pound and actually raced in a televised event at Southwell Races, (you can view some videos at www.tamingtigers.com).

What was also cool about Jim is that he drew some parallels to the behavior of our sales folk such as “understanding and controlling your time,” “head in your targeted direction every day” and “never give up”. People always give up on a bad day. Leave it a week and see if you still want to give up.
My lasting memory of my time spent with Jim is when he said to me, “You are writing your own story by the decisions you make. When you are 90 and in the nursing home, you will not have much paper left and you will be running out of ink. Your only story submission will be that you want to win at dominoes today and you hope you don’t smell!”