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 Dallying Toward Destiny— By Russell Burck, PhD, EANT Member I'm sitting in the Peak Performers group of Chicago's Sharpest Entrepreneurs. Our teacher and coach, Steve Sipress starts off talking about me and how I've gone around cold-calling on businesses in Oak Park, IL, to find their horror stories about merchant services. Merchant services are what enables business people to take credit/debit cards. For a moment I'm flattered that Steve has mentioned me. In private conversation, he's told me that it's gutsy of me to do cold-calling. He should know. He earned his living that way for nine years, door to door. I start to talk about cold-calling and how it's yielded 15 pages for the little book I'm writing. My working title is Swiped: Horror Stories and Minor Irritations of Business People in and around Oak Park about Merchant Accounts. I'm pleased with my results. I have stories from about ten people so far. Some of the stories make me feel as if as if I were falling into a deep crevasse. I'm pleased with this course of action. When I listen carefully to Steve's words and tone, I realize I've misunderstood where he's headed. He's not saying how great I've done going out and doing cold-calling. If he had been writing this book, he says, it would be done and he'd be working on volume two. After all, he says, "How many words does a person speak a minute?" We settled on about 120. "Multiply that by 10 and you get 1200 words. How many words to a page?" Group members made several wild guesses, but I divided 1200 by my old standby, 250 per page and said five. A minute or so later, Steve said-shouted, "Five pages. You get 20 stories, you've got a 100 page book. I could have been done by now." Oddly enough for me, I wasn't offended by Steve's singling me out to be the subject of this lesson. There's a directness in the entrepreneurial community that I've learned to expect. Sometimes, I really do love the truth for its own sake. What was the "truth" out of which I was operating when I first heard Steve mention my name? Mentally, but even more emotionally, I was back in grade school. I was basking in the teacher's attention. I was imagining that I was being presented as someone who had done something unusual and whom the others would do well to emulate. When Steve didn't praise me for having the courage to go out and do cold-calling, I decided it was double-take time. Sure enough, something closer to the "real" truth of the situation was soon dawning on me. Truth be told, this was a better, more useful message than the one I imagined at the beginning. Steve was telling me that I wasn't paying attention to a basic rule of entrepreneurship. Money rewards speed. The universe favors action, often the faster the better. I was dallying toward my destiny. Questions for further study
Russell Burck, Ph.D., has been an EANT member since 2004 and is a regular contributor to TALK on the topic of Ethics and the Enneagram. Now retired, Russ was Associate Professor of Religion and Health at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, Illinois. He co-edited "Clergy Ethics in a Changing Society" which was named one of the ten best in the ministry in 1991. For further information, please email Russell.
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Matt Ahren's Interview with Tara Brach Where Are They Now? Scholarship Recipient Updates by Gina Thomas Dallying Toward Destiny by Russell Burck
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