The very first "motivational speaker" I heard as an adult was a gentleman named Mort Utley. I experienced his speech in May of 1989 in Nashville, Tennessee, at the end of a week of Sales School with the Southwestern Company. I was 19 years old and had just finished my freshman year at the University of Wisconsin, and Mr. Utley's speech was the final component of my formal training to sell educational books door-to-door for the summer. I was absolutely coming out of my skin with an indescribable combination of intense excitement and great fear. Mort Utley's speech made one of the most "un-motivational" statements I had ever heard. He said:

"Most people do not get what they want out of Life."

How depressing, I thought. This guy gets paid large amounts of money to "motivate" people and he comes on stage and says that most people do not get what they want out of Life. Thanks for the tip, Mister genius - I suppose next you'll tell me that people from France all speak French. No kidding most people don't get what they want out of Life, I thought - WHY DO YOU THINK I AM LISTENING TO YOU IN THE FIRST PLACE?!?!?!

I didn't want to be most people, and my guess is that you don't either. If you want to be most people - broke, unhealthy, and with too little time to actually enjoy your Life - then I doubt you would be receiving this newsletter in the first place. However, throughout these installments you will have some of the things you might believe are "just the way the world is" challenged very directly, and this is the first one. We spend so much of our lives wanting to fit in and be normal that we often unconsciously find ourselves striving to be like most people. In other words, we are actually trying to be average.

In America at the beginning of 2003, here is what "average" really means...

Physically - roughly half of Americans are clinically obese.
Relationships - over half of American marriages end in divorce.
Professionally - somewhere between 75% and 85% of Americans do not like their jobs.
Financially - at least half of American households regularly struggle with "too much month at the end of money."

And I could go on and on and on. Why do I spend the first part of this supposedly inspirational article being such a bummer? Well, it's mainly because if you are serious in your quest to lead the kind of Life that you really want and really deserve, the first realization that needs to happen is that even now - in the most technologically advanced and prosperous society the world has ever seen - AVERAGE SUCKS!

But like we said earlier, you don't want to be average - congratulations. The fact that you even subscribe to this newsletter tells me that you are already on the path to being way out of the ordinary. In the coming months you are going to learn some very basic principles - principles that have been proven over literally thousand of years to help individuals and organizations see consistent upward growth in every area of Life - professionally, financially, physically, emotionally, spiritually and in all types of relationships. The great thing about success it that it's simple. Not easy, mind you, but simple. If you learn the fundamentals of successful working and living (and there are really only a few) and then apply then diligently, you definitely will achieve the things you want to be in Life. A bold statement, to be sure, but it's not really up for debate. A mentor of mine once gave me some advice that

"Success leaves clues," and
"If you do the right things long enough consistently, your success is assured."

Some of the best advice I ever received, and I've never found it to be false. I've seen these principles bring real joy and success to thousands of individuals who've followed them. At the same time, when I counsel individuals or groups that are not seeing the results they desire, they are invariably in violation of one or more of the principles we teach in our workshops and in our writing.

So to sum up; people are always asking the big questions - what is the key to success? They ask God, gurus, mentors, speakers, themselves, parents, friends, the boss, the coach, sometimes they even ask us here at Freedom Speakers