One Sticky August Afternoon Diagnosed with emphysema at age forty-one, Ted Isaac was told by doctors he’d be lucky to live another five years – later he found out that they had actually given him less than a year. The door to the future had slammed shut, leaving him with the challenge of finding some way to support his family after he was gone: his wife and children, aged three, four and five. He recounts: “One night very late in my hospital bed, I sat up and calculated that when I died in five years, I would have to have a million dollars to cover my children’s future. This was an unimaginable sum to a man earning fifteen thousand dollars a year, but that’s what I would need. The hospital discharged me just after the New Year – out I went back into the world, but with a terminal diagnosis. As time and I stumbled on, I learned an obvious lesson: you can’t save a million dollars in five years – not on fifteen thousand a year; not in hundred years. I had to do better. I started a moonlight business, After Hours Advertising. It doubled my income, but by then I had only four years to live. I’d still never save a million dollars in that short time. Then I had a brainstorm. My wife received money – saving coupons for store products in the mall. Manufacturers sent out billions of these cents-off coupons every year by direct mail. I would distribute them as a supplement to the Sunday newspapers. It would save the advertisers millions of dollars in direct-mall costs, and may be it would make a million dollars for me. For two years I struggled with various ways to print and distribute coupons in newspapers, until finally my big break came. One sticky August afternoon the promotion manager of a major corporation called to ask, “Ted, is it reasonable for you to distribute thirty-five million coupons for us next January?” Up to then I’d never distributed a million anything. I said, “No, it’s not. But let me try.” Thirty-five million coupons meant a $350, 00 order for me, $250,000 in my pocket if I succeeded; a million-dollar bankruptcy if I didn’t. I had to do it, and I did. Three months later I called them back to say, “I’m ready to go.” Ninety days later I had $250,000 in the bank and I’d launched a new industry. Later that year, on December twenty-third, five years after my sleepless night in the hospital, I signed a contract to sell my new coupon business for over a million dollars – the money for my children’s future. By then I had discovered that even doctors can make mistakes. They had diagnosed my illness incorrectly, but for that I have to thank them. If it were not for receiving a diagnosis of terminal illness, I’d still be sitting behind a middle – management desk, pulling down a middle-management salary. I did not die, nor do I expect to die soon. My desperation business is billion-dollar industry. I learned a lesson that long-ago night in the hospital: don’t wait for a death sentence to explode into action. Your future becomes what you make it.” You will succeed! Shalom! Your Life Coach @UjuBOnyechere BB: 224AEA77 Aspire to inspire!
Posted on: Tue, 20 Jan 2015 10:11:03 +0000
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