All posts by Keith Thompson

Everybody is a salesman

Career, Life

I don’t care what you do for a living, you are in sales. There are jobs (like mine) that are considered sales jobs and but the thing most people overlook is that all jobs are sales jobs. You are either selling a product/ service or you are selling yourself.

Take the young lad who goes to the grocery store and applies for a job as a bag boy. During the interview process don’t you think he is selling himself? Sure, he is. He is putting forth his very best self in hopes of getting a job. Every time a person talks with their boss or co-worker, they are selling themselves and their personality.

This morning (early) my brother was having surgery and we were told that due to COVID, his wife could only see him in the surgery prep area for only a few minutes. So, I took her up there and while I was parking, she is told at the reception area that in fact, no, she can’t see him. Well the salesman part of me gets involved and I asked the young gentleman at the desk, “if she could have seen him, where is the surgery prep area located?” he says, “oh, you go to floor two take a left and down that hall etc. etc.” I told the young chap “thank you.”

I told my brother’s wife to follow me. You guessed it, I put on my salesman’s shoes and with boldness, walked through door after door, hall after hall until we were standing at the nurse’s desk in the pre-op area. A little begging (selling) was involved but ultimately the nurse agreed that since we were there (only because we found it on our own) she could go in tell him she loved him before the surgery.

Afterwards the nurse asked us who had brought us up there to the pre-op area. I told her it was all my fault and all my doing because (a) it was true and (b) I didn’t want the little person in the lobby to get fired over it.

So, my point is this, every interaction, every conversation, every handshake, every meeting, every interview, every phone call, every zoom call is an opportunity for you to sell yourself. You don’t have to be selling a product or service to be considered a salesman. Everyone is in sales. KT

Yorkie Dogs

Family, Life

Yorkies are probably the cutest, funny, liveliest and hardest to train of all dog breeds. You can’t get mad them because they look at you with those little soft eyes and they pretty much get a pass.

We have a little nine-month-old female Yorkie and she thinks she is the boss. Our little fat Sheltie just lets her run all over him. Literally. She climbs on his back like a jungle gym. Someone ask me the other day if she was house trained and I said sure, she only poops in the house.

Our first Yorkie (passed away in 2012) was a male and Elaine loved that dog like a dog hasn’t ever been loved. She would coddle that rascal every evening and the little mutt would sleep with us up next to Elaine. The funny thing was that Elaine’s favorite room in our house is the formal dining room and I kid you not, that little dog would poop under her dining room table almost every day like it was gift he left just for her. Ha. The worst scolding, he ever got didn’t even faze him because he knew he wasn’t really in trouble.

So now to the new female puppy, Sophie. My favorite room in the house is my home office and guess where she wants to poop? You guessed it, my office!

Therefore, if you want a dog that you can’t help but love and will alert you if the wind blows and one that you can’t ever fully train, get a Yorkie. KT

Rowing in the same direction

Family, Life

I have never been on a rowing team, but I am fascinated by how it works. There are many similarities in rowing to life, work, marriage and relationships.

In a rowing team there is only one person (coxswain) who can see the goal line, the competition and direct the boat (scull) to the destination. All the rowers have their back turned away from the goal and focus solely on the instructions from the coxswain. Even though the coxswain never picks up an oar, he or she is the most important person in the boat and usually the races are won or lost depending how aware and adaptive the coxswain is and how they lead the crew.

In a rowing crew there are times when they row light (half pressure) and times when they give it their all (power 10.) One would think the rowers just give it their all straight off the starting line but that is not correct. They must get in a rhythm, and it doesn’t matter if they have been rowing together for a year. Evert race must get in its own rhythm, or it will veer off course. It is the coxswain’s main objective to get the crew in sync before they start pulling hard.

Work, life, marriage, relationships all have similar requirements. Imagine if a college rowing team were all giving instructions and commands at the same time. It would be a disaster. Such as in life, very few things are more smooth and sweeter than a couple, family or a team pulling together at the same speed and in the same direction. The boat (your life) will glide soother and straighter if there is an agreement on the same goal and moving in the same direction. Everyone doesn’t have to be the boss (coxswain) because everyone gets the same gold medal if they win.

So, in life, it is important to be with people who all are rowing with the same goal in mind and in the same direction. KT

Harry Truman and the Atomic bomb decision

Life

In 1945 the US was at war with Japan and Germany at the same time. Harry Truman was Franklin D. Roosevelt’s vice president and when FDR died in April of 1945, Harry Truman became the President of the United States. In any normal time period, that alone for a vice President would be life altering. When you are at war on two separate fronts, the pressure is almost unimaginable.

The US had been developing the atomic bomb for some time and the first successful test was on July 16, 1945. Harry Truman (in office for three months) had the most difficult decision any president has ever had to make. Do we use it?

The US military had been fighting on two fronts for four years straight (after Pearl Harbor) and had already lost 400,000+ young men and women. The US had taken Midway and Iwo Jima, but Japan would not surrender because they still had two million soldiers on the mainland. Truman knew that to use a Normandy style attack on the mainland of Japan, the US would lose possibly 10’s of thousands of additional service men and service women.

People in the US were sick of war and death and Truman knew that the US had something no one else in the world had. It had the way to end the war. It took a decision no other president before or after has ever been faced with. Do we drop a bomb that will kill everything breathing for several miles surrounding the landing site?

Japan was rigid in their unwillingness to end the war and had already said they would fight to the death until every Japanese solder was dead.  They would not surrender even if it meant saving their own people.

Many historians look back and give their opinions about what a monster Truman was. What they don’t realize was that if the war continued, America could have lost another million service men and women and continued fighting Japan for another five years. The loss of life over those next five years would have changed the next three generation of America.

Truman made the decision to use the atomic bomb on Hiroshima hoping it would end the war. The following are the facts and the results for those that find fault with the decision Truman made.

A Boeing B-29 Superfortress took off the morning of August 6th and dropped the “Little Boy” atomic bomb on Hiroshima Japan and it killed 140,000 people and eviscerated an entire city and region. Japan still wouldn’t surrender. Three days later another B-29 Superfortress dropped the “Fat Man” atomic bomb on Nagasaki. The Imperial Japanese Army surrendered five days later, and the world took a needed deep breath. The truth is that the decision to use the bombs saved countless hundreds of thousands of American AND Japanese lives. It saved those lives because it ended the war.

So, when you hear pundits spout off about Truman and the use of overwhelming force to end the war, remember there is a strong probability that you would not be here today if Truman had not made that decision. Why? because very likely your fathers or grandfathers might have died if the war had lasted another five years. The decision Truman made stopped the war in eight days and saved countless lives. KT

What do you do when your plans fall apart?

Career, Life

At the start of 2020, most everyone had wishes, hopes, dreams, objectives and goals for how they wanted 2020 to go. Over the past five months, most of those plans have changed.

Do you roll up in a ball and just wait for 2021? No, you don’t. You still get up each morning and wash your face and keep on keeping on. You work at it and then you work at it some more and you will eventually get through it. These past five months have been devastating to many industries, jobs, families, lives, health and livelihood, but sitting down and crying about isn’t going to change anything.

A smart person once said, it is amazing how much better you get at something the more you practice at it. Well, today and for the past five months I feel like I have been just practicing (ha) but with practice and consistency comes great reward and great satisfaction.

In life you can’t be rigid in your thinking and your planning. Take any family vacation you have ever been on and you know that whatever the plan may have been at the beginning, there were always changes that needed to be adopted. It is that way in life also. If you have an exact plan and then get upset when things don’t go accordingly, you are just going to end up frustrated. You can’t control what you can’t control but you can control how you respond to it.

There are some people if their plan is disrupted, they lack the ability to recalculate and respond to the change. They just give up. Don’t be one of these people. I love the military special forces units like the Rangers, Green Berets, Navy Seals, Marine RECON units. If you study these units, you will find that they have THE plan and then they have all kinds of contingency plans if events change. Very rarely do you see them at a loss of what to do. No, they don’t wring their hands and worry. They just move to their back up plans.

That is what I am saying today. Just because the plan you had earlier in the year has changed, be thankful that you are alive and well and able to keep learning and moving forward. Stay flexible in your thinking and able to respond positively to change. KT