What My Cat Can Teach You About Being Successful In Your Wholesale Business

What My Cat Can Teach You About Being Successful In Your Wholesale Business
By: Jeff Yancey

My Cat knows something that you do not.

Here’s why:

My cat, whose name is KOVO, can teach you a valuable lesson. A valuable lesson not only in success and marketing, but in life. You see, he's a picky eater. If you have a cat or dog, you may be able to identify with this. There are two kinds of food that we feed him:

1) "Hard food" - You know, just regular cat food.

2) Then there is "soft food.” The “soft food” comes in pouches and cans. It has sauce and juices, and all kinds of goodies in it.

Well, which one do you think he likes the most?

You guessed it, the soft food. And he's not shy about asking for it. He will start whining and begging for it even though his bowl is full of "hard food," why?

Because he likes all the juices and sauces in the "soft food."

Ok, now here's what he can teach you about being successful: Persistence.

He will cry, whine, beg, rub my legs, meow and generally cause havoc around the house for as long as it takes until he gets his "soft food." He would eat it 10 times a day if we gave it to him. So we have to limit it.

But here's the "juicy" part (excuse the pun). He won't stop until he gets what he wants. He wears us down. Five minutes, 10 minutes, 20 minutes, 45 minutes. That cat will persist for an hour if necessary until we finally say, "for crying out loud OK, here's your soft food!" Do you see the lesson here?

Persistence is one of the cornerstones to success. The first 45 minutes he didn't get what he wanted, but he kept trying. He didn't give up, and he finally got what he wanted: his "soft food."

So what my cat can teach you about success, is to be persistent.

Now, to be persistent is not enough. This goes a bit deeper. If you noticed, he also deployed a couple other techniques. He had a clear goal in mind. That was, to get his “soft food.”
He also had a plan. So with a clear goal in-his-sites, and a solid plan, he carried it out to completion with persistence. Kovo got his soft food.

He used every persuasive trick in his book to try to get what he wanted. He meowed. He got my attention and told me clearly what he wanted.

He rubbed my legs. This is appealing to my emotional side. Psychology has taught us that people generally make their purchasing decisions based on emotion, and then they justify it with logic. Isn’t it amazing how a cat knows this? Yet many who call themselves a marketer, or sales professional, do not understand this concept.

If you do not understand even this basic principle, how can you effectively persuade anybody to do anything on a consistent basis?

Sun Tzu tells us in his classic military document, “The Art of War,” that you must know yourself and also know your enemy. And if you do that, “you need not fear the outcome of 100 battles.” But if you do not know yourself or your enemy, “you will succumb in every battle.”

I encourage you to read that document which has been conveniently translated into a book. You can get it from virtually any bookstore for a nominal fee. As you read it, see how you can apply each concept to business, marketing and life. It’s amazing how the entire book, thought to be written in the fifth century B.C., is as practical as ever in our lives today.

If you are married, think about how you won-over your spouse. Whether you knew it or not, you probably used these same persuasive techniques.

You had a clear goal, which started with one of you asking the other out on a date. From there, the entire process was a back-and-forth “marketing clinic” in psychology. It was basically emotion and persuasion, until you finally got married.

Entire books are devoted to these ideas, so I could go on and on. But let’s get back to the driving point of this article: Persistence.

Some of the most successful people in the world will tell you that the key to success in anything is to not give up.

One very successful marketer and teacher told me that only one thing of out 13 things he tries works. To him, that's good news. That means all he's got to do is to try about 13 things and he's got something successful.

The problem is, most people try one or two things, and if those things don’t work, they give up. Many people believe they are a failure after only one or two unsuccessful tries at something.

If I may, I will draw a brief football analogy here: You do not score a touchdown every time you go on offense. It’s a fact. But that doesn’t mean you are not going to win the game. How many times have you seen a team come from behind for a miraculous win in the final minutes? It’s because they didn’t give up! The game’s not over until the clock runs out. Your game is not over until you are six-feet-under!

A 30% hit ratio in baseball is hall-of-fame numbers. Listen, Thomas Edison tried around 10,000 versions of the light bulb before he found a version that worked. Someone told him that he had failed 10,000 times. He replied, "No, I simply found 10,000 ways that didn't work." That's the kind of attitude and mind-set you must have in order to find success.

Now it's time for you to learn from my cat and go out and get your "soft food," whatever that may be. If my cat can get what he wants, so can you.

Sincerely,
Jeff Yancey
http://www.dirtywholesalesecrets.com

Comments:

Anonymous said...
Very Good.
June 20, 2008 12:06 AM

earthfirewaterair said...
inspirational
August 9, 2008 4:18 PM

Lisa said...
If you think your cat is persistent, wait till your son grows up a little more.
Then you'll really get a lesson in persistence. I know I already raised 3 and
they were holy terrors when they wanted something and I said no. Sometimes it
took them days, but they usually wore me down and got what they wanted. But I
also wanted to thank you for all the good advice you have given me and I'll see you on the other side once I am up and running. Shouldn't take more than one more week.
Lisa
September 11, 2008 7:53 AM

Gameworldbaby said...
I needed that, Its true and inspirational-Enjoy your day and stay bless.
October 4, 2008 10:04 AM