What The Tortoise Taught Us
Alex Haley, the best selling author of the epic book ROOTS once said, ‘Anytime you see a turtle up on top of a fence post, you know he had some help.’
I must admit that I personally have an affinity with the humble turtle, or rather the tortoise.
For at times I believe that what takes others five minutes to do, can at times take me anything up to five years to complete. One example being that after dating my wife for over five years, it took my mother saying, ‘Are you ever going to marry that girl’ to spark the thought and finally the corresponding action that led to marriage.
It then took me another twenty years to finally hit my strides in business. In fact. it wasn’t until I was thirty years of age that I picked up and read my first motivational book.
And at another stage of my life it took me five years to then take a business from where it was to the franchise starting posts. In fact, I often say to those that ask that I actually had to wait for my kids to grow up – because I had a secret desire to be in business with my children – before I really developed a business with ‘real teeth’.
But I suppose that throughout the years I have watched many a hare – who sped past me – crash and burn.
And so through those same years, I have continued to plod along step by step consistently, ever learning and ever consoled by those business giants who have gone before me such as Ray Kroc, who took over the reigns of a humble hamburger joint called McDonalds in his 50′s, and then there was Colonel Sanders who expanded his secret recipe fame – commencing at the age of 65 – that led to the creation of the KFC empire.
Oh don’t get me wrong, I’ll still stand on the sidelines and cheer all those ‘wascally wabbits’ who live their hare-raising adventurous lives.
But I’m going to stick with the tortoise – maybe just for a little bit longer – because of what the tortoise has taught us. That slow and steady wins the race.
