(Bob Proctor, Chicken Soup for the Soul)

I was doing a weekend seminar at the Deerhurst Lodge, north of Toronto.
On Friday night a tornado swept through a town north of us called
Barrie, killing dozens of people and doing millions of dollars worth of
damage. Sunday night, as I was coming home, I stopped the car when I got
to Barrie. I got out on the side of the highway and looked around. It
was a mess. Everywhere I looked there were smashed houses and cars
turned upside down.

That same night Bob Templeton was driving down the same highway. He
stopped to look at the disaster just as I had, only his thoughts were
different than my own. Bob was the vice-president of Telemedia
Communications, which owns a string of radio stations in Ontario and
Quebec. He thought there must be something we could do for these people
with the radio stations they had.

The following night I was doing another seminar in Toronto. Bob
Templeton and Bob Johnson, another vice- president from Telemedia, came
in and stood in the back of the room. They shared their conviction that
there had to be something they could do for the people in Barrie. After
the seminar we went back to Bob's office. He was now committed to the
idea of helping the people who had been caught in the tornado.

The following Friday he called all the executives at Telemedia into his
office. At the top of a flip chart he wrote three 3s. He said to his
executives "How would you like to raise 3 million dollars 3 days from
now in just 3 hours and give the money to the people in Barrie?" There
was nothing but silence in the room.

Finally someone said, "Templeton, you're crazy. There is no way we could
do that."

Bob said, "Wait a minute. I didn't ask you if we could or even if we
should. I just asked you if you'd like to."

They all said, "Sure we'd like to." He then drew a large T underneath
the 333. On one side he wrote, "Why we can't." On the other side he
wrote, "How we can."

"I'm going to put a big X on the 'Why we can't side.' We're not going to
spend any time on the ideas of why we can't. That's of no value. On the
other wide we're going to write down every idea that we can come up with
on how we can. We're not going to leave the room until we figure it
out." There was silence again.

Finally, someone said, "We could do a radio show across Canada."

Bob said, "That's a great idea," and wrote it down. Before he had it
written, someone said, "You can't do a radio show across Canada. We
don't have radio stations across Canada." That was a pretty valid
objection. They only had stations in Ontario and Quebec.

Templeton replied, "That's why we can. That stays." But this was a real
strong objection because radio stations are not very compatible. They
usually don't work together. They are very cutthroat. They fight each
other. To get them to work together would be virtually impossible
according to the standard way of thinking.

All of a sudden someone said, "You could get Harvey Kirk and Lloyd
Robertson, the biggest names in Canadian broadcasting, to anchor the
show." (That would be like getting Tom Brokaw and Sam Donaldson to
anchor the show. They are anchors on national TV. They are not going to
go on radio.) At that point, it was absolutely amazing how fast and
furious the creative ideas began to flow.

That was on a Friday. The following Tuesday they had a radiothon. They
had fifty radio stations all across the country that agreed to broadcast
it. It didn't matter who got the credit as long as the people in Barrie
got the money. Harvey Kirk and Lloyd Robertson anchored the show and
they succeeded in raising three million dollars in three hours within
three business days!

You see, you can do anything if you put your focus on how to do it
rather than on why you can't.

Have a positive day!
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