2010-43 - Rush Trucking…

When Andra Rush started her trucking company, all she had was a beat-up van, a pair of used pickup trucks, and the naive certainty of a 23-year-old. She figured it would take her about four years to make her fortune. Then she could use her newfound millions to accomplish her true goal: tackling poverty on Native American reservations across North America. "I thought I could retire by the time I was 27," says Rush, a member of the Mohawk Indian tribe of Ontario, Canada. "At that age, you don't know what you don't know."
Rush was raised 30 miles outside Detroit, not far from her paternal grand-parents and their Ontario reservation. When the teenage Rush visited the reservation for the first time, she was struck by the poverty and lack of hope. "I really wanted to make a difference," she says.
She graduated from the University of Michigan in 1982 and took a nursing job. But she was dismayed by the low pay, and within a year she was pursuing an MBA. That summer, she interned at an airfreight company, where the speed of package pickups and deliveries drove profits. "I thought I could do that better," Rush says.
She maxed out her credit cards and borrowed $5,000 from her parents to buy a van and two used pickups. She wooed clients, accepted every delivery job that came her way, and worked nursing shifts on weekends. Rush also kept a single-minded focus on meeting deadlines—no matter what. In the wake of 9/11, when increased security stalled traffic for hours on Detroit's largest bridge, she hired barges to get her trucks across the Detroit River.
By 2001, many of Rush's 1,000 employees were Native Americans, working alongside people of every background. But she felt she hadn't done enough. So she joined forces with a Canadian parts maker to design and assemble auto components, such as the dashboard instrument panels that go into Chrysler minivans. She located the plants near reservations, creating opportunities where they were needed most. By 2009, her auto parts business was generating $370 million in revenue.
~ Margaret Heffernan

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"Don't aim for success if you want it; just do what you love and believe in, and it will come naturally."
~ David Frost
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2010-42 - Eating the Cookie…

One of my patients, a successful businessman, tells me that before his cancer he would become depressed unless things went a certain way. Happiness was "having the cookie." If you had the cookie, things were good. If you didn't have the cookie, life wasn't worth a damn. Unfortunately, the cookie kept changing. Some of the time it was money, sometimes power, sometimes sex. At other times, it was the new car, the biggest contract, the most prestigious address.
A year and a half after his diagnosis of prostate cancer he sits shaking his head ruefully. "It's like I stopped learning how to live after I was a kid. When I give my son a cookie, he is happy. If I take the cookie away or it breaks, he is unhappy. But he is two and a half and I am forty-three. It's taken me this long to understand that the cookie will never make me happy for long. The minute you have the cookie it starts to crumble or you start to worry about it crumbling or about someone trying to take it away from you. You know, you have to give up a lot of things to take care of the cookie, to keep it from crumbling and be sure that no one takes it away from you. You may not even get a chance to eat it because you are so busy just trying not to lose it. Having the cookie is not what life is about."
My patient laughs and says cancer has changed him. For the first time he is happy. No matter if his business is doing well or not, no matter if he wins or loses at golf. "Two years ago, cancer asked me, 'Okay, what's important? What is really important?' Well, life is important. Life. Life, any way you can have it. Life with the cookie. Life without the cookie. Happiness does not have anything to do with the cookie, it has to do with being alive. Before, who made the time?" He pauses thoughtfully. "Damn, I guess life is the cookie."
~ Rachel Naomi Remen

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“Dream what you want to dream; go where you want to go; be what you want to be, because you have only one life and one chance to do all the things you want to do.”
~ Author Unknown
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2010-40 - May This Encourage You, Always…

Don't spend major time with minor people. If there are people in your life who continually disappoint you, break promises, stomp on your dreams, are too judgmental, have different values and don't have your back during difficult times... that is not friendship.
To have a friend, be a friend. Sometimes in life as you grow, your friends will either grow or go. Surround yourself with people who reflect values, goals interests and lifestyles.
When I think of any of my successes, I am thankful to God from whom all blessings flow, and to my family and friends who enrich my life.
Over the years my phone book has changed because I changed, for the better. At first, you think you're going to be alone, but after awhile, new people show up in your life that make it so much sweeter and easier to endure.
~ Author Unknown

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“Birds of a feather flock together. If you're an eagle, don't hang around chickens: Chickens can't fly!”
~ Author Unknown
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2010-39 - The Man Who Thinks He Can…

If you think you are beaten, you are.
If you think you dare not, you don’t.
If you would like to win but you think you can’t;
It’s almost a cinch you won’t.

If you think you’ll lose, you’re lost.
For out in the world we find,
Success begins with a fellow’s will;
It’s all in the state of mind.

If you think you’re outclassed, you are.
You’ve got to think high to rise.
You’ve got to be sure of yourself,
Before you can ever win a prize.

Life’s battles don’t always go to the
Stronger or the faster man.
But sooner or later, the man who wins;
Is the man who thinks he can!

~ Waler D. Wintle

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“If you think you can, you can. And if you think you can't, you're right.”
~ Mary Kay Ash
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2010-38 - Secret of Success…

"Sir, what is the secret of your success?" a reporter asked a bank president.
"Two words"
"And, sir, what are they?"
"Right decisions."
"And how do you make right decisions?"
"One word."
"And, sir, what is that?"
"Experience."
"And how do you get experience?"
"Two words"
"And, sir, what are they?"
"Wrong decisions"
~ Author Unknown
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“Don't be discouraged by a failure. It can be a positive experience. Failure is, in a sense, the highway to success, inasmuch as every discovery of what is false leads us to seek earnestly after what is true, and every fresh experience points out some form of error which we shall afterwards carefully avoid.”
~ John Keats (1795 - 1821)
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