Speak with Passion

But have a purpose

By Bob Stovall, Co-owner of Gain-Stovall, Inc.

 There‘s a man in town, I’ll call him Joe. Joe sells a product, a great product in fact. I buy it regularly because it is so good.

Joe’s product is so good because Joe has a passion about what he does. He is passionate about quality; he is passionate about integrity in production; he is passionate about wholesomeness. (Did I mention it is edible?)

I went to hear Joe speak at a dinner recently, and as I expected Joe spoke with a passion, but not about the passion that has made him so successful. He spent almost an hour talking about his other passion, the one that got him started in his current business. It is also a very negative passion – almost an obsession – and Joe needs to get over it.

You see, Joe hates the big players in his industry. They are very big players and they are not known for caring about the quality of their product or the value to their customers. Joe has spent a good part of his life fighting the big bad corporate monsters.

Joe fought the giants and lost. Then he did something about it. He went on to produce the best quality product in his industry and sell it at a premium price to people who care about what they consume.

I expected to hear about Joe’s travails with the big guys because that is part of his story. It would have been a great story if he had spent a bit of time talking about fighting the big guys and then changing course to pursue his passion to produce a quality product to sell to appreciative customers. He has been quite successful at doing that.

This is the tale of opportunity lost. Here was a man with a really good story to tell, about how he turned adversity into opportunity to create a unique business. He had an audience anticipating his story about how he found his niche in a brutal and competitive industry by doing what he knew was right and not just expedient.

The opportunity was lost because Joe forgot about his audience. He forgot to ask himself what people should take away from his talk. The speech was all about Joe the victim. As a result, the entire room left feeling empty - an evening wasted.

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