Diamond Minds
Diamond Minds By Barry Farber Don't Let Anyone Else Determine Your Success or Failure ime and energy are the fuel for creativity. If we spend that fuel worrying about others' performances, or how they see ours, we waste those precious resources. We can't control what other people do. If we let others define failure for us, we lose our ability to succeed. Public figures are especially susceptible to this pressure. But some understand the need to define for themselves what success means. For example, when the football Hall-of-Famer Franco Harris left the game, he had no idea what to do. "I had one wonderful career and I loved it," he says. "When I was let go, I sat down for about 20 minutes with all kinds of thoughts running thorugh my head. What would be my second career? "Then I said, 'Enough of this. I'm going to get up off the couch, go downtown, and get on with my life'," he recalls. "Luckily I didn't sit there with visions of past and future football going through my head to keep me down—I got them out of my mind and said, 'Hey, I'm going to go get busy.' And I went off and got busy and never T Barry Farber " No one can make you feel inferior without your consent." he'll do whatever it takes to make his business work'." But in the words of Eleanor Roosevelt: "No one can make you feel inferior without your consent." Harris understood that. Instead of giving up, he used his strengths, abilities—and the tenacity he had learned as a Pittsburgh Steeler—to propel him forward. Today, the renamed—and successful—R Super Foods sells nutritional doughtnuts, wraps, and breads. And Harris is a spokesman for others —Eleanor Roosevelt who are starting second careers. He sees himself not as a failure, but as my product. It was a Saturday, an hour's drive away, somone who succeeded more than once. "These days you have to look at a second cabut I said to myself, 'You have to do this—you're starting a business.' So I went. As I was heading reer as the second part of your life," Harris says, into the store, an older couple spotted me. And "It's very important that you approach it with the the guy said, 'That's Franco Harris!' His wife re- same enthusiasm. Don't be afraid and don't think plied, 'That's not Franco Harris—he wouldn't be that it means you're a failure. Starting at the bottom is not something to look down on. If you use carrying boxes into a store!' "It made me wonder whether because of what you've learned from your other profession, where I'd been, people would think that carrying you're going to move along quicker. Starting a new boxes made me a failure," he continues. "Had it business, starting all over again— to some people, been someone else, people would have said, 'Wow, that's scary. To me, it's exciting." s looked back." Like millions of people, Harris had to find a second career. As a famous face, he had unique challenges when, in 1990, he first opened Super Bakery, which produced nutritious doughnuts. "I was on my own," he recalls. "And one day a store called asking me to bring over some boxes of T Barry Farber (barryfarber.com) speaks, writes, and consults on sales, marketing, and personal achievement. He also markets innovative products on TV. He is the best-selling author of 11 books, including his most recent: Barry Farber's Guide to Handling Sales Objections (Career Press). Contact him at barry@barryfarber.com. ex 50 VICINITY MAGAZINE Summer 2009
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