7 Years of Invaluable lessons, a Lifetime of Success Achieved.

When you get to a certain point in your life—a point in which you have found success, run into obstacles, experienced loss, found faith, and get to share it all with the ones you love…you can’t help but sit down and reflect on how you got there. I truly believe that everyone has a potential success story in their future. In business, it all comes back to basics—those basic life lessons that are instilled to act as the foundation to our life’s achievements. For me, as I sit here recapturing my life’s trials and tribulations, it was in the army that I truly gained my most valuable character traits. These rudimentary qualities helped mold me into the business man I am today.

I was sixteen years old when I made the decision to join a program offered in the Canadian Army called The Apprentice Training Program. It was a two year course where they taught me the skills to fulfill the requirements to be a resourceful young adult and soldier. These lessons were ones that I carried with me, not only throughout my 7 years serving in the army, but for the rest of my life.

After leaving the army, my second job was learning to be a sales person. My boss taught us you had to make 18 calls and put on three presentations to get a sale. I never questioned this lesson and made my 18 calls daily. Within a few months I became quite good at booking appointments while all but two of the people in my training class had washed out. Later I realized that it was the experience of making all those calls that made me better at it and after a few months I became the top salesman in the national company. I credited my success totally with the discipline learned in the army to follow orders. I was told 18-3-1 and never questioned it while many of the other trainees thought it was a waste of time to make all those calls.

It’s the simple lessons, like discipline, that turn a good soldier into a great business man.  When finished completing my apprenticeship, they had each of us write down the lessons that we learned in the program. These are what I recollect—and have proven invaluable to the success I’ve achieved.

Lessons Learned at ages 16 – 18 in the Soldier Apprentice RCASC, Camp Borden 1954

1.    To do what I was told without totally understanding why – just do it!

2.    How to fight for my rights – the drill hall was a very honest place

3.    How to share! $39.00 was not much and would not buy much gas, but combined with    about six other apprentices it could buy a lot of  gas.

4.    How to feel good about myself. I learned to dance properly, clean myself and dress up in my Blues and Greys

5.    How to listen. You did not get told much. When you held a grenade and were told to take the pin out and then throw you needed to listen.

6.    How to have gratitude, be grateful for all I had so many people had nothing I always felt like a very lucky man now and back then.

7.    How to have respect for everyone – they were all higher than me and deserved my respect.

8.    How to laugh – I really saw humor in most things and just recall laughing a lot with the rest of the guys

9.    How to have confidence in myself – many times we were ordered to do things that we never ever thought we could do, maybe on the obstacle course, or driving those huge truck, or throwing a hand grenade but after we did them and did them pretty well man alive the feeling of accomplishment and confidence was over powering. I believe it gave me the confidence to accomplish a lot of what I did later in life

10. Lastly how to have pride in yourself for who you are and what you stand for. I was a member of the Canadian Army. I was somebody. I had to serve with pride because of what was expected of me. I needed to step up and be a soldier. It still feels good!

These ten basic lessons learned are what created the fundamental foundation to my life of success—in both business and in life.