The Southwestern Company Alumni Blog
Most Thursdays during Southwestern’s sales school weeks I have the privilege of taking photos at Southwestern’s President’s Club dinner. The students who earn the right to attend the dinner have met either the sales or the recruiting requirements and are the top of the top of Southwestern students. On their last night of sales school, after training the first year students and preparing themselves for a summer on the bookfield, they are treated to an amazing dinner at Nashville’s City Club on the 20th floor of the Sun Trust building.
It is not the great food that makes you take a step back when you enter the room, it is the incredible caliber of student that fills it. Each week as Dan Moore announces the winners I am inspired by their accomplishments off of the bookfield. I recall telling the students I worked with as a Sales Manager that they were most likely going to be successful with or without Southwestern. Southwestern is merely a catalyst to get you where you want to go faster with better preparation. These students have learned to overcome challenges and live by Spencer Hays’ motto, “There are two kinds of people in the world: Some find an excuse, and others find a way.”
Last Thursday we were honored to have Southwestern alumni Sam & Cynthia (Dishman) Kirk join us at the President’s Club dinner. Their son Eugune is going on his second summer with Southwestern and was enjoying some well earned steak. As the dinner was winding down, Sam recalled how he was with Southwestern for seventeen years and built a tremendous organization. Sam and Cynthia started Youth About Business, a non profit organization, ten years ago to provide entrepreneurial training to young people in America’s cities.
Sam mentioned to the students headed to the bookfield that one of the greatest lessons he learned at Southwestern was the meaning of success. So many of us have trouble feeling successful even when we accomplish amazing things. Sam reminded us that success is doing your best every day. There are so few things in life we can control, but when we lay our heads down at night we know if we did our best – and that is how we should measure success. I am so blessed to still work at Southwestern where I have wonderful mentors that surround me and remind me of these lessons. For those of you who are not so lucky I thought I would include a poem that I think you will recall from your years on the bookfield.
The One in the Glass
by Dale Wimbrow, ©1934
When you get what you want in your struggle for pelf
And the world makes you King for a day,
Then go to the mirror and look at yourself
And see what that one has to say.
For it isn’t your Father, or Mother, or Wife
Who judgment upon you must pass.
The person whose verdict counts most in your life
Is the one staring back from the glass.
He’s the person to please, never mind all the rest,
The one with you clear up to the end.
And you’ve passed your most dangerous and difficult test
If the one in the glass is your friend.
He may be like Jack Horner and “chisel” a plum
And think you’re a wonderful guy,
But the man in the glass says you’re only a bum
If you can’t look him straight in the eye.
You can fool the whole world down the pathway of years
And get pats on the back as you pass,
But your final reward will be heartache and tears,
If you’ve cheated the one in the glass.
[1] “Pelf” is an archaic term for money, usually used in a derogatory sense
(Slightly edited to make it more genderless – this is all about doing one’s very best – and no one knows what that is except ourselves!)
