Pinballl Clemons

I met and fell in love with a man called Pinball Clemons last week. Not to worry, my husband was already in love with him. I, on the other hand had never met him.
CFL Hall of Famer,
Vice Chair of the Toronto Argonauts, Michael Clemons was a name I’d often heard in the community but due to my armchair sports allergy, I’d never personally been acquainted with.
Well, did he ever blow me away when I saw him speak for the first time last week. He had some doozy quotes that I LOVED and resonated so much with. Here are a few of them.
The first zinger was:
“Excuses are like belly buttons, everyone’s got one and none of them are good for anything”
I laughed out loud at that one. I want so badly to say this so many times during so many conversations I have with business women I’m networking with. (Not clients though, with them I tell them how it is and I call them on their excuses. Most times they love me for it, other times I piss them off.)
You know who doesn’t have excuses? Successful people, that’s who. They take responsibility and change their lives if something isn’t working. Victims blame everything and everyone except themselves for their circumstances and wait to be rescued by the miraculous change in the ‘excuse’ condition that’s responsible for their situation.
“If what you’ve done yesterday still sounds good today, then you haven’t done much today”
I loved this one so much that I made it the title of this post. I found that I was doing this a lot. I kept talking about how I tripled my revenue last year. What about this year? I’m happy to say that I’m 132% ahead of year to date same time last year right now. However, I have to double that if I want to reach my true goal. So as Janet Jackson would say ‘what have you done for me lately?’
“If a paralyzed 15 year old can golf, you as an entrepreneur can’t be afraid to take risks”
Pinball cried when he told the story of his true hero, a teenager who became paralyzed from the neck down, who was unable to move or speak and could only communicate through an interpreter who read his blinks. He talked about how if this little boy could still have the spirit to get up each and every day and live his very difficult life in joy, going as far as golfing while strapped to a lever and having his dad’s help for his swing, then we as entrepreneurs didn’t have the right to be afraid of discomfort.
I really loved the lessons contained in these golden nuggets that fell from Pinball’s lips and I live by them. Who is inspiring you today?
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