I was a senior at Borah High School in Boise, Idaho in 1963. In order to fulfill all of my requirements to graduate, I had to take a class in business economics. Now, for most of the students in my predicament, it did not promise to be a great class. Who really cared about business and how to operate it profitably or even just participate in it? What we students all thought about the class didn’t really matter. It was required to be taken if we desired to graduate! Isn’t it amazing how quick and easy it is to make quality decisions when you have only one option.
What a majority of the students liked most about the class was the teacher, Mr. Tate. He was rotund, jovial, interesting, highly experienced, and very humorous. He was also a very good story teller and used that technique in most of his instruction. He had all the prerequisite credentials coupled with a great personality all of which enabled him to take a not-so-interesting-class and make it into something that all of his students would remember for the rest of their lives.
What I remember the most from Mr. Tate’s own lips was the last statement he made to all of the seniors who would leave his tutorial influence in June of that year via graduation. Here is what he told us…. “If I could wish everyone of you only one thing,” he soberly said, “it would be that you start a business of your own in America,…and …fail. I hope that you fail so miserably that you wind up loosing everything you invest in it…just, to get it started up and running!” With a grin spread across his face he ended his exhortation with,…“ By failing, you will learn more about business economics,…about people,… about America, and about success than I could ever have hoped to have been able to teach you in this class!”
Whoaaa…that statement rocked my brain as well as my world! How could he make such a statement? Isn’t a teacher supposed to inspire, encourage and motivate graduating students on to higher and greater achievements? This guy was actually discouraging and demotivating those of us who at age 18, had already full well decided that we were going to become the future leaders of the free world!
Little did I know at that time just how very much this teacher, Mr. Tate, was preparing me for my own successful future!
Fifty-one years have past since I sat in Mr. Tate’s business economics class. That is quite a long time. Mr. Tate has long since passed on into eternity, but the use of his devoted life to teaching teenagers what the really important things in life are, still lives on today…at least through my life. The best use of your life is to so live your life that the use of your life,….will out-live your life. That is exactly what Mr. Tate did!
When he made his final statement, I thought it odd that he would say such a thing. I wondered what he was really trying to teach or tell us. I have since learned precisely what he meant and what he was really teaching his seniors. Most people have to learn life’s lessons of truth the hard way, the most expensive and the most time-consuming and painful way. Such has not been the case with Mr. Philip W. Tate’s graduates. We were all fore-warned and fore-armed.
The facts are that there are only two ways that a person can learn: (1) by their own broken nose or (2) by someone else’s broken nose. Now I must ask you,….what is the least painful way for you to learn? The correct answer to this question should be rather obvious. Learning from the broken noses of other people is always preferable.
The essence of my economics instructor’s life lesson was really two-fold:
(1). The basis of all true success in life is failure. Failing when attempting to achieve success teaches you as much and often times much more about success than a person would ever learn from succeeding from every one of his attempted efforts.
(2). Failure is the training ground for great and lasting long-term success. Being willing to fail time after time and still try again is the stuff that teaches one perseverance, consistent application of work effort, and knowledge of what not to do. All of these lessons are the building blocks of lasting success.
After Mr. Tate’s economics class, I went on to graduate from college with a B.S. Degree in Accounting. I served four years in the U.S. Army as an Officer in the Corps of Engineers. After my service I became a C.P.A. and worked for a major national Big Eight Public Accounting Firm. After that I was the CEO/CFO of a private real estate development company. All these efforts were but preparation training grounds for what I was really created for and was to be used for by my Creator God for His glory. In 1977 I finally started my own international sales and marketing business. I failed many many times as I journeyed along my chosen pathway.
Now listen,…I learned many great and valuable lessons from all those failures and mistakes. I learned from the mistakes of others as well as from those I personally made. From those learning experiences, I developed great knowledge, understanding, and wisdom. Once I knew from personal experience how and why businesses were properly built and how to keep them operating at a profit, I could then begin correctly teaching other people how to start and build their own successful businesses. From that point forward, it was all a matter of the process of duplication and application of God’s Law of Increasing Returns. Everything begin falling into place. I learned to build my own success based upon helping other people succeed before I succeeded. I was able to pass on to many other people that which I had learned the hard way during the learning and preparation stages of my life. The sharing of my acquired knowledge and wisdom developed from my own trial and error technique ( and I made lots and lots of mistakes ) was paid for with my own broken nose. It hurt, but it taught me valuable knowledge and gave me vitally needed personal experience. I learned what to do and what not to do. In addition, I learned what I did not want to do with my life which I personally feel is just as important, if not more important, than knowing what I did want to do with it.
Knowledge and wisdom gained from personal action and effort always produces necessary experience, regardless of whether your efforts produce failure or success.
A determined man filled with personal experience simply cannot be stopped from succeeding!
Life does not have to be “fair” in order for you to succeed. Your success will be achieved in the same manner and way that others have succeeded before you. All that is required from you is that you find an opportunity that will permit you to succeed to the levels of life you desire, then duplicate the work ethics required to achieve it. In other words,….Stop waiting for anything or anybody.
Go Get Her Done! Right Now!
Peace and Love to All of You……………Poppa Bear