You may have never heard of Blake Mycoskie, but you’ve probably heard of his company, TOMS shoes. They’re the company that when you buy a pair of shoes, they’ll give a pair to a child. All told, they’ve provided over 60 million pairs of shoes to those in need. Mycoskie was once asked if his company had ever had one of those WFIO moments-one of those We’re F’d It’s Over kinds of situations. Chuckling today, Blake thought back and told of a time that just as TOMS was starting to catch on, they were fulfilling large orders rolling, in until one day Blake got a call from his warehouse that due to a cheaper glue used, the soles were coming off of the shoes. Faced with mounting orders, a reputation at stake, a supplier who had screwed them by making the shoes with substandard materials, and the fact that they’re too broke to fix the problem, Mycoskie sat back and said, “We’re fucked, it’s over!”
After some heavy drinking and shoulda/coulda recaps, Mycoskie and his team made some adjustments and found a supplier to take a chance on them. With the only promise was future orders, Blake convinced the supplier that if they could produce the orders to specifications, they would get their money. The supplier complied only because Mycoskie took the first chance by asking for the seemingly impossible.
The story reminds me of the parable of the 5 loaves and 2 fish….with thousands of people to feed, Jesus took his eyes off of his circumstances and looked up into the hills for the answer.
See…the solution to your problem is never at the same level as your thinking. You’ve got to lift your eyes…elevate your thinking and take some GTF outta here kinds of actions.
Blake didn’t just sit there Indian style and just let life punch him in the face. Jesus didn’t just turn and look at his disciples, shrug and say, “Bruh I don’t know!” You can’t just hold onto the buoys of life hoping the waves will eventually subside…sometimes you’ve got to catch a wave and start riding…and when you fall off, you’ve got to get back on your board and find the next wave.
The crew at TOMS vowed that if they were going to go down, they were going to go down swinging. They refused to back down to the problem-instead they would punch at the problem until they found a crack and once they found the crack, they would squeeze their fingers into the crevices and began clawing away until they found the solution. They lifted their eyes-thinking higher, so high in fact that because they believed in what they were doing, they were able to convince a supplier to fulfill the orders now and get paid later.
There’s a solution behind every circumstance, but you’re not going to find it thinking at the same level as the circumstance & waiting for something to change.
You’ve got to move from It’s over! to Dammit it’s on!
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