Friday 8/1/08
Being that my first business experience came from selling children’s books door to door for
The Southwestern Company I’ve been known to make a few cold calls. Today I landed in New York City. It’s only the second time I’ve ever been here and I came because I am the Youth Chair for the
National Speaker’s Association global convention. For the next few days I’ll be watching, entertaining, and playing goalie to keep 125 students between the ages of 10-24 “inbounds” and to “Dear God don’t let me lose anyone.” Obviously NYC is home to the Empire State Building which of course is an important stop for me on my Take The Stairs World Tour. Since 9/11 you might imagine that it’s nearly impossible to gain access to the stairs in such a highly secured building. In fact I couldn’t even get a phone call returned – which is why I thought I’d just stop by in person and knock on a few doors.
I’ve known for sometime via research that the only chance of getting in that stairwell is to be invited into the once a year race sponsored by the
NY Road Runners. This is the same New York Road Runners who put on the Boston Marathon except instead of thousands of people participating in the race, the Empire State Run-Up Race is limited to just 100 COMPETITORS from around the world and by INVITE ONLY! The more I learned about it, the more discouraged I was becoming. But I had to knock. By some random chance of navigating an automated voicemail system I ended up calling the fund raising arm of the organization, the New York Road Runners Foundation and God must’ve been at work because the woman who picked up the phone was incredibly warm and caring and also quite curious about the Take The Stairs mission.
Her name was Elizabeth. She is just one of a team of people at the organization who have made a commitment to dedicate their life to serving young people. And I think partly because I’m a fairly young (26) guy and because the nature of my trip was reaching out to young people, Elizabeth gave me a chance – A HUGE CHANCE! She set up an immediate meeting with the Executive Director of the Foundation, Cliff. I took a cab over to their office and as I walked up to the front door of the office it’s safe to say that my palms were sweating. Not just because I was nervous but because I had to talk my way past a high security entrance on the ground floor and sprint up 12 flights of stairs to make my meeting on time!
Elizabeth and Cliff were even more amazing in person. Their entire office was buzzing with the passion of well-to-do people living a life in service of others. It was an incredible team and an incredible meeting. Cliff explained that he is fairly confident that he can get the Take The Stairs guy into next year’s upcoming run-up at the Empire State Building! (We’ll keep our fingers crossed). They also shared with me a program that they run in inner city schools called Mighty Milers. It’s a program that gets kids excited about running and physical fitness at a young age. It also teaches them the importance of setting goals and of course, my very favorite word discipline.
When I reviewed the Mighty Milers DVD I learned something quite sad. Today over 25% of the US population is more than 30 lbs overweight. Let that sink in for a moment…25%. As I’m traveling the world on this Take The Stairs tour I’m realizing two things: 1. That success really does come from doing things others won’t do – such as knocking on doors even in despair and 2. That there is no doubt that the world is in dire need of discipline. As a culture we are slipping in every area of our life. The two most noticeable failures are with the overwhelming amount of debt that we carry on our credit cards and the overwhelming amount of weight we carry on our bodies. The world needs discipline. Will you join me in fighting for the cause?
Join the Take The Stairs Tour:
Click Here Find out more:
Take The Stairs Website 
">
But what I do know is that making a commitment to Take The stairs is much less painful then some other commitments we could be making. Skim boarding for one.
