Positive Tip: This Is Charles

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The Carpenter:

A Story About the Greatest Success Strategies of All

This book will inspire you to build a better life, career, and team with the greatest success strategies of all. Available where books are sold including Amazon & Barnes & Noble

This is Charles

This is Charles. He picked me up at the Philadelphia airport and took me to Lancaster, PA for an event where I was speaking. I had a lot going on that day and needed to read and write a bunch of emails but as soon as Charles started talking I knew I needed to stop what I was doing and listen.

Charles is seventy-nine years old. He grew up on a farm and at twenty years old worked in a plant making hot dogs. He said all hot dogs are made the same way. The difference is the quality of the meat and how old the meat is.

Charles knew he wanted to do something entrepreneurial in addition to working in the plant so he found a part time job selling Cutco knives. He tried to go on one appointment a day after working his shift at the plant and after two years it was going so well he decided to sell knives full time.

After a while he and his wife felt inspired to work at a home for troubled boys and did that for twelve years. Charles still keeps in touch with some of the boys who have turned their lives around and now have great jobs and families of their own.

Charles also sold insurance part time for a while and eventually started driving for a car service. He has been selling knives for fifty-four years, driving a car for thirty years and doesn't ever plan to retire. On our way to Lancaster he received a call from a customer who wanted to reorder knives and I thought how amazing is this? He's seventy-nine years old. Driving a car, answering his cell phone and making a sale!

But the best part was when he dropped me off he said he started an outreach ministry helping people who are living on the streets. He said, "I asked God to help me love people the way He loves people." I told him, "I think you are doing a great job."

The best is yet to come,
- Jon