the Original Vocation agency

A recent Wall Street Journal article discussed the idea that employees need to find purpose in their work in order to be happy or satisfied. The article was really addressing the always present question of what employers should do to keep their employees happy. While money used to be the driving factor, and still is to some degree, the focus is moving off of money and to the meaning that the job provides for the employees life.

My question is, “Should your job provide a purpose for your life?”

At first glance I think most people would respond yes. After all, on average, we spend more time at our job than we do anywhere else. If there was one thing in our life that provided meaning and purpose, it had better be our job, right? Well, no. I don’t think it does.

The meaning and purpose that we have for our lives MUST be deeper than what we do for a living. There is just simply no way we can allow a job or career to be the reason that we live – our purpose in life. What happens when we lose our job? Everyday people lose their jobs for any number of reasons. Should we expect that they have now just lost their reason for living or that they no longer have a purpose in life? Of course not. It ridiculous to even think that.

So where do we get our purpose?

Well, my purpose comes from God. Read Mark 12: 30-31 in your Bible and you will see where I get my purpose. My job then serves as one of the means for fulfilling my purpose. Just like the way I take care of and love my family is one of the ways I fulfill my purpose. What this means is that I can lose my job but my purpose is life remains the same. If I need to I just look for another job where I can apply the skills that God gave me to fulfill my purpose. (read 1Peter 4:10-11)

Consider where you get your purpose? Is it from your job? If so, what will you do if you lose your job? If you believe that your purpose in life is to the best race car driver but you get in a crash and can’t drive anymore, what will you do? Will your life be over because you can no longer fulfill your purpose? I hope not. Find meaning and purpose that will withstand any changes in your life.

The biggest thing that I have learned from working with a fitness coach is that I CAN push my body much further than I ever thought I could. Actually, I can push my body further than I ever thought I wanted to. It is really amazing how our minds get in the way of our physical activities and equally amazing how much we can accomplish once we can get out of our own way.

All the time that I spent in the gym before working with a fitness coach was for the most part wasted time (and money). I would get on a machine of some sort, crank away for thirty minutes or so, work up a little bit of a sweat, maybe lift some random weights and then head on out. That was nothing. My body was probably laughing at me and I probably deserved it. I wasn’t pushing myself at all. I was staying in a comfortable zone where there was a slight twinge of pain but nothing too radical. I was being a gym wimp!

I have not been on an machine other than a stationary bike for a ten minute warm-up in six weeks and I have had the best work-outs ever. I actually feel like I worked out when I get done. Like it was after the first week of football practice back in high school. My body is not laughing anymore. By working with a fitness coach I got to the point that I wanted to quit (and I would have if I would have been by myself) but she would let me – and I lived. Not only did I live but my body (once it recovered) actually thrived on the real exercise that it was now getting. And the really funny thing is – it is really basic exercise. It is squats and lunges and curls and push-ups and crunches. By working through these basic exercises I am getting the best work-outs ever.

If someone asks me about working out at the gym today, I say,”Get off the machines to get results.”

I have struggled with getting in shape/healthy for about the past ten years. I try to blame my wife since that I really fell out of shape right about the time we got married, but then she give me “a look” and I have to admit that it is really my own fault. I know the real cause is the food I eat and I now know that I wasn’t working out hard enough.

You see, I have belonged to a gym almost my whole adult life. There were a few years when I didn’t have a membership but during those times I worked out at home. If I had a dime for every hour I have spent ‘exercising’ I would have a whole lot a dimes. But no matter what I did, I could never really lose weight and get in shape. I might lose a few pounds here and there but I was never able to get my body where I wanted it to be. I didn’t understand what the problem was. Well, about three weeks ago, I found out what the problem was – I was being a wimp!

I finally got tired of attempting to lose weight on my own and hired a coach or personal trainer, whatever you want to call her. The first night we she worked with me I thought I was going to pass out. She worked me WAY, WAY, WAY harder than I had ever pushed myself. In that one night she showed me why I had never been able to lose weight – I wasn’t working out hard enough!!! She pushes me to finish exercises that I would normally, on my own, just walk away from. I would quit but she doesn’t let me.

This past week she started out our time together by saying “You’re going to hate me tonight.” – I did. She put me through a workout that was the hardest thing I have done…ever I think. I wanted to quit, just walk away but I knew she wouldn’t let me so I stayed through the whole hour of torture. When I had to stop and gasp for air, she simply waited until I recovered and then we started again. When she was bouncing around like a kid in a Tigger costume on Halloween night and I was bent over gasping for air and listening to my heart beat out of my head, she looked at me and I could tell that she knew I hated her. She smiled!

In the end of course I don’t hate her. I actually like her and appreciate that she will push me harder than I push myself. That is, after all, why I hired her. And if she didn’t push me to the point that I hated her during the workout, then she wouldn’t be doing her job. I have almost lost 10 pounds in three weeks (I am eating much better also) and have learned a ton about how to work my body to get the most out of a workout. It is the best money I have ever spent to hate somebody.

If you are wanting to get in better shape, hire a coach. Just make sure you hire a coach that will push you to the point that you hate them if you want to get real results.

Greg
www.thevocationagency.com

So, if you are going to be a professional sales person, in particular, a professional sales person that sells gutters and comes to my house, I actually expect that you will be, um…professional.

When we had convinced the two bank manager dressed gutter sales ladies that we were not going to sign up with them that evening. The one lady (who said she was in training when they first arrived…hmm?) fired up her push-to-talk and phones home. Talking to the manager so that we could hear both sides of the conversation (wow what a neat sales tactic). And after a few back and forths, the manager informed me, via the speaker phone that I was not a very smart man. I smiled. The bank manager dressed gutter ladies then hastily picked up their stuff, mumbled something about apparently doing something to make me mad and marched out the door. Which was very much fine. But, you know, they didn’t leave a card or a phone number or anything. They had said that we would receive a quote in the mail that would be good for a year….hmm, maybe the said we’d get the quote in a year.

The other guy, the marketing department genius that didn’t know why he was at our house, well, he apparently left all his fancy letter head and business cards at home. (HELLO!!! He’s in Marketing!!!) Because after we convinced him that we did really want him to give us a quote, he pulled out a calculator and a pad of paper and went to figuring. This wasn’t bad because it made sense that he would have to add some things up but, when he flipped the pad of paper around I could see what he was actually doing. He had written the quote out on a standard piece of paper, with a pen and simply signed his name. Shoot, I could have done that and saved him the trouble of coming out. ( I could have saved us a ton of money too) And that was it. He didn’t say anything, he didn’t explain anything, he just sat there. us looking at him and him looking at us. Then we said thanks and he tore the piece of paper off the pad, laid it on out table and left. That was it.

I don’t know why either of these companies presented themselves this way. I can’t believe they make a lot of sales with these techniques (if that is what they are). If you go into someones house to sell them something, please be professional about it. Use company letterhead, leave a business card and listen to the customer and you increase your chance for a sale by about 75 billion.

Greg
www.thevocationagency.com

The Original Vocation Agency is now open and ready to serve. Many people today go to work dreading and even hating their jobs. We were not created to live like that. We all have a purpose and therefore it is possible that everyone work in a job that is meaningful. Check out thevocationagency.com for more details.

Recently my wife and I invited a couple of companies into our home to show us what kind of gutter systems they had to offer. This is the first of a few blogs on that experience.

To sell you must know……what?

Well, you must know your product, your customer, your situation, your strengths, your weaknesses…you just must simply know.

When the first of these two companies arrived, the reps came in and started their dog and pony show. They had a big binder that they read through almost word for word, telling us about ladders and how dangerous they are and how we should not be cleaning out our gutters because we might fall and kill ourselves. They told us how bad all of the other gutter companies were, not compared to anything, just how bad they were. But for everything that they told us, they read it out of their binder. They couldn’t switch topics without finding it in the binder first, it was horribly annoying.

When I stopped them and just asked them to tell me about their product and to give us a price, they pulled out another binder and began telling us about their company mascot. It was clear that these two people didn’t have a clue about the products they were selling. They were simply mouth pieces, sent out to regurgitate information that someone else had put together.

The second company’s rep came in, introduced himself and asked us why he was there. He simply didn’t know why he had driven to our house that night. Apparently someone told him there was a sales call so here he came. He didn’t know if he was selling gutters or siding or roofing or toilets, I guess. We told him gutters and within fifteen minutes, he had written out a quote (another blog entry) and was on his way.

Needless to say we still need gutters and will continue looking until someone shows up that knows what they are talking about.