Are You a Finisher

Hey team, alright. So here we are for another Wednesday Workshop. Can you believe it’s October already? Man, October. Starting to get cool out. Got to love it.

So, I wanted to talk to you this morning about are you a finisher. Do you finish things? How important is being a finisher to what you do? I read something today and as I was reading it, it got me thinking about this concept.

There was a gentleman from Tanzania in 1968 in Mexico City. We had our Olympics, and he ran the 26.2-mile marathon. In the race, during the race, he had fallen, hurt himself. Got bandaged up, he was bleeding, and he completed the race. He’s literally, I think, last. He came across the finish line, I mean, most of the people had left the stands. The person that won the race was a gentleman from Ethiopia. But the gentleman’s name is John Stephen Akhwari, I believe, anyway from Tanzania, and when people asked him, “You had no chance of winning. Why did you endure the pain, and the hardship and stuff of continuing to run that race?” His answer was, “My country didn’t send me here to start a race, they sent me here to finish the race.”

I was really touched by that because in life, in success, when we want to succeed in life, we’re going to run into some things. We might fall down, we might hurt ourselves, we might need to be bandaged up. We need to be finishers. Successful leaders, successful people in life are people that finish the job, not people that start the job.

Starting is one thing, finishing is a whole other thing.

So, what are you gonna do? Are you gonna be a finisher? Are you the kind of person that wants to finish the race? Do you want to get it done? Are you willing to through adversity, through hardship, get it done?

That’s Northwest Enforcement, Inc. That’s one of the things that we do with our leadership class. It’s one of the things that we’re doing through our patrol teams, our care teams, and safety teams, and the Central East Side.

It’s about finishing, it’s not about starting. A lot of people start.

I remember when we first started Northwest Enforcement, Inc. Karen and I sat down with some small business people from the S.B.A. and one of the first things they said is “You know, why you want to start a business? You know most businesses fail within the first two years? It’s really hard to start a business. It’s really tough to start a business.” Actually, it’s not tough to start a business. It’s tough to continue to grow through the adversity of the business. And it’s tough to grow through the pains and the failures of starting a business.

It’s not hard to start a business. As a matter of fact, it’s two pieces of paper and $50 dollars. That’s what it takes to start a business,  that’s right. Two pieces of paper, and $50 bucks! That’s all it takes to start something if you want to get into business. But to finish, to finish strong. To be great at what you do, to make a difference and build a following of people. To go from one to over 135 people. That takes somebody that’s willing to finish and to have and garner a relationship with people around them to build that business.

So, this Wednesday Workshop is coming to a close. But remember, be valuable because nothing less will do. Take your ideas of finishing with you.

Are you a finisher? I believe you are! Because you’re part of a great finishing team and we’re going to finish strong. We’re going to have a great rest of 2022 and we’re going to start 2023 strong. And we’re going to finish 2023 even stronger than we started. We’re going to finish 2022 better than we started. Again, you’re a big part of that, so thank you for that.

 All right, God bless you guys. Have a wonderful rest of your week.

I’ll see you next week.