Bulldog In the Rain

This is a story that I have told several times to different audiences throughout my career in direct sales.  One of my new "followers" (thank you) has asked me to repeat it and I'm happy to do so.

I am a dog lover and make no secret of it.  I am particularly fond of what I call "smash faced dogs".  These would include pugs, boston terriers, English bulldogs, you know any dog that is lacking a snout.  The flatter the face, the more I love them.  I currently have 5 pugs - Samson, Sweetie, Jewels, Sherman and Tug - and was a pug breeder for many, many years.  So, when I say I am a dog lover, I mean it.

Anyway ... at one point in our lives we had an English Bulldog name MAC, named for Michael, Andrew and Christopher.  Now MAC wasn't the brightest bulb in the pack, but then if you know bulldogs, you know they aren't known for their keen intelligence.  And I admit, MAC was just plain dumb, lovable, but dumb.

Now one of MAC's favorite activities was to go outside in the rain.  Which is fine, except that MAC went out in the rain, sat down and looked straight up. Get the picture?  A bulldog sitting in the rain, looking straight up, with rain pouring down his nose.  And choking.  Yep, he'd look straight up, rain would go in his nose and down his throat and he would choke.  Did that stop him from looking up or sitting in the rain?  Nope - he loved it!

So, one particular rainy day, I'd had a really bad day at work.  I was a Sales Director at this time for The Longaberger Company and my numbers weren't exactly where I wanted them to be.  My team wasn't doing what I thought they should, I'd had a day of really frustrating calls trying to get people to go out and book shows and sell and was generally in a fairly grumpy mood when I got home.  When I got home, MAC wanted to go outside.  Of course he did!  It was raining!!

My backyard was fairly muddy, so I decided to let MAC out the front door, which he loved!  He ran straight out to the end of the front sidewalk, sat down and put his face in the air.  Rain went down his nose and throat and he began choking.  (Don't worry, MAC doesn't die from this behavior, this is a happy story.)  It's raining pretty hard, so I'm figuring this can't be good for very long, so I need to get him back inside.

I stand in the front door - I'm not going out in the rain after any bulldog - and call him, "Come here MAC, come here good boy!"  He looks at me, which temporarily stops the rain from going down his throat, wiggles just a bit and looks right back up into the rain again.  Brilliant right?

So, I resort to offering him an incentive (bribe).  MAC loves treats, so I get a biscuit, show him the biscuit, call to him again "Come on MAC, come on boy, come and get your biscuit."  He looks at me, considers the biscuit, wiggles his backside (bulldogs don't have tails) and looks right back up into the rain.  AHHHH!

I need bigger ammo.  So, I pull out the big gun - a hot dog!  MAC loves hot dogs, surely this will do it!  So, I go back to the front door, show him the hot dog, observe my neighbor across the way staring at the goings-on from her bedroom window and then proceed to lean over and wave the hot dog to lure MAC inside,  "Come on MAC, come on boy, how about a nice hot dog?!"  Now, he's interested!  He actually stands up!  He looks at me, looks at the hot dog, takes a big breath and sits right back down and looks up!  And yes, starts choking.

Now it was during this last exchange that I have an epiphany.  MAC was acting exactly the way my team was acting.  It didn't matter what I put in front of them, how much I begged them, pleaded with them and incented them, they weren't going to take the action I wanted them to until it was their idea.  MAC turned down his favorite people-food in the whole world because at that minute, sitting in the rain was what he wanted to do.  It didn't matter what I wanted for him, it wasn't his idea to come inside, so he wasn't going to. He really didn't even care that he was choking, he wanted to sit in the rain and until he was done wanting to sit in the rain, he wasn't coming in.

The moral to this story?  You can provide information, you can offer the most desirable reward but you can't motivate someone else.  You can inspire them.  You can do your best to lead them, but motivation comes from within.  It's what Dave Longaberger called the "fire in the belly".  If they don't want to move, they won't.  If they don't want to be successful, they won't be.  If they don't want to take the action that will stop something negative from happening, you can't do it for them. You may want it for them, but it won't make it happen.

I realized that day that I had lots of bulldogs in the rain on my team.  You probably know lots of bulldogs in the rain as well.  Don't give up on them.  Keep reaching out to them - at some point it will be their idea and they will do what you hope they will. Keep looking for the inspiration that will work. And more importantly, ask yourself if you are someone else's bulldog in the rain! If you are waiting for someone else to motivate you, it's not going to happen.  Only you can do that.   In MAC's case?  I went inside, just left the front door open.  He came in pretty quickly when he could no longer see me standing there - it was no fun to be in the rain with nobody watching.  And you know what?  When he came in, I think he had a smile on his face!