You probably have to be a baby boomer like me to remember this classic Colt 45 beer commercial. It featured a gentleman who looked like Pierce Brosnan/James Bond, dressed in a tuxedo, sitting at a table with a checked table cloth in the middle of a bull fighting arena. Suddenly a bull was released from the pen. It ran straight at the man and knocked him and the table over with a crash. The man calmly picked himself up, dusted himself off, righted the table and was handed a cold glass of Colt 45, which he drank with a smile. You can watch it below:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLL62iJhc88&feature=related
I have run into real people who remind me of that guy. No matter how chaotic their life gets they always remain cool and calm. My brother Dave is one of these people. No matter what the obstacle, nothing seems to faze him. He’s a CPA who has been the CFO of various companies for the last 10 years. One of the companies was constantly underwater, hemorrhaging cash and on the verge of bankruptcy, and Dave had to keep it afloat. Picture yourself waist-deep in quicksand, slowly sinking – that’s the position my brother was in.
As his older brother I took great pride in asking him how the company was doing at the end of each quarter. His standard response was, “I think we’re starting to turn the corner.” He would follow that up with the few bits of positive information he could glean from the company’s finances. He worked for that company for 8 years, regularly putting in 14-hour days. Eventually his statement came true – they ultimately turned the corner and all of the people who stuck with him were rewarded handsomely when the company was purchased by a larger firm.
Dave has a great reputation as a person who can turn companies around because he will stay the course and keep his cool no matter what. I believe he is the kind of person who, like the guy in the commercial, always gets back up again no matter how hard the blow that knocked him down. He always manages to keep the faith, even when things seem impossibly grim.
Winston Churchill described this strange quality that Dave has in his famous definition of courage:
“Courage is poise in the face of adversity.”
I think we could all use a little more of that.
Have a great weekend,
Ro