To do Great Things, Be a Great Person
What does a peach have to do with becoming a great person? Find out in the video and in the text of the video below!
Here’s the transcript from the Video found below
Hi, I want to take a minute of your time today to share with you a concern that popped up for me several years ago as I was out doing keynote speeches and corporate trainings for entrepreneurs and leaders and executives and CEOs and that’s this: Listen, I get that we all want to grow our sphere of influence. That’s an important thing, right? We want to create a legacy for our family. We want to do great things for the team members and employees that are in our organizations, but it seemed to me that we’re spending way too much time going to conferences and to seminars, going to college and university to get more credentials to expand our sphere of influence, but that we’re spending our time focusing on the wrong areas of improvement.
Hi, I’m Larry Broughton and one of the things that I have been trying to pound into my own head ever since that revelation and pound into anyone’s head who will listen is this: If we want to do great things, we have to be great people. Have you ever had a leader or a manger in your life that you didn’t respect, who just wasn’t a great person? In fact, they may have been prickly or mean or disrespectful or dishonest? How loyal were you to those people?
I can tell you, I’ve had those people in my life and I wasn’t very loyal. I didn’t have a high level or regard for them or a lot of respect for those types of people, but it reminded me of a story that I’ve shared with several people over the past several years about when I bought my first house in San Francisco. This is a long time ago and if you’ve bought real estate before, you know one of the great principles of buying real estate is to buy the ugliest house in the block, fix it up and then create wealth or create a profit, right? So that was the principle I used here.
I went out and found an ugly house on a great block in San Francisco. One of the key selling points for me, one of the things I really loved about this house as I was looking at it is that when I went into the backyard, there were weeds literally that had grown up above my head. There were pricker bushes and bramble bushes and old tires and old rusted out bicycles, an old gas stove was sitting back there.
Well, back in the corner, you could see there was a tree and the real estate broker let me know hey, this is a peach tree. I thought wow, I love peaches. I’m a juicy peach person. I’d love to own a house, particularly in San Francisco, that has a peach tree. How many fruit trees do you see in the backyards of houses in San Francisco?
I bought the house, fixed it up, painted it, renovated the thing, cleaned out the backyard, mowed all that stuff down, threw out all the trash, but when spring time came around, I went back to this peach tree and there were some flowers on it, some blossoms and I waited a little bit of time and then all of a sudden, there were little pieces of fruit on there.
I kept watching and waiting and finally went out there and there was one piece of fruit on that tree and I thought ah, this is going to be awesome! I got out and I pull this peach off the tree and I look at it and it is the ugliest piece of fruit I’ve ever seen. It was dried up. It was black. It had bugs on it. It was like holy smokes! What happened? I just bought this house because I love this peach tree!
I look at this peach and I said, “Peach, what happened to you? You are the ugliest thing I’ve ever seen. I’m a juicy peach person. Why aren’t you more juicy?” The peach looked back at me and said, “Larry, if you want juicy peaches, you’re talking to the wrong dude. You want juicy peaches, you got to be talking to the roots. You got to get down in those roots. You got to aerate the soil. You’ve got to give it some nutrients. You’ve got to give it a little bit of fertilizer. You’ve got to do a little bit of work if you want juicy peaches.”
I think that that’s a great way to look at life. Now let me clarify the peach did not talk to me, but the rest of that story is absolutely true and that is this: Listen, if we want to do great things in life, we have to be great people. To be great people, we have to do some work on ourselves sometimes, right? If we just put ugliness and negative thoughts into our heads, into our hearts, into our souls, ugliness is what’s going to come out.
Here’s what I want you to do. Several years ago, I started doing this and this transformed my life. Every night before I go to bed, I put positive thoughts into my head. I do a gratitude journal. I thank God for all the great things that are in my life. When I get up in the morning, before I do anything else, I do my seven minute routine. I set my intentions for the day. I’m going to do x,y and z today. I’m going to do some great things. I do some positive reading. I do some meditations. I do some prayer, I do some mantras on how I’m going to be intentional today, to do great things, how to serve other people.
Here’s my admonition to you: I want you to do something significant today. Go out and do great things. Serve other people and remember, if you want to do great things in life, you got to be a great person. Do me a favor. Go to Yoogozi.com. That’s what this website is built for. It’s got bite size nuggets of leadership tips and inspiration to help you be a great person. Go do something great today. Go get ’em.
