Art Williams The Man His Story and the Just Do It Speech

I don't mind telling you since you take the time to read this that I have failed a few times in my life. But the only way we really fail is if you leave the experience not learning anything of use. Well one "failure" in my life was my attempt at financial sales. My time spent there and experience comes out all over this blog in terms of what I have read, what I continue to read, what I try to teach when given the chance and how I process things.
Again, things that go on in a typical day trigger thoughts that are buried somewhere. Just the previous Sunday Tita Agnes asked me who came up with 'Just Do it'. I told her founder of the company I used to be at. I told her very little about Art. I feel this is the way to make up for that. Sometimes I think blogging is the only way I really communicate now.
Art's story is fascinating. Where he took a personal hurt and transformed people's lives and built an empire. Competitors in an industry understandably dislike each other. But the company Art built was unique. The whole industry ganged up on them. That was the beauty because in the difficulty lay the opportunity. A decade after I left it, I still ask the question : What If?
Follow the links and you can learn a lot about success, determination, finances, management, caring about people and other practical things. Don't take my personal inability to master the material as your invisible ceiling. The video is excellent and I heard the audio form many times in the nineties.

Ed
http://www.cbn.com/700club/guests/bios/Art_Williams111406.aspx
http://www.everybodywantsacoach.com/
http://achievebalance.com/commonsense/








http://www.amazon.com/Coach-L-Williams-Story/dp/0978626605
COACH
The A.L. Williams Story

"But I've never heard of term insurance."
"It's the oldest form of insurance - nothing more than pure death protection. Everyone in the industry knows about it, but most companies don't sell it."
"Why not?"
"Because it's so inexpensive."

One April night in 1963, a good man died of a heart attack. Just 48 years old, he left behind a wife and three children. And not much else... No will. Too little life insurance. No meaningful savings. The oldest son, Art Williams, already married with a family, watched with heartbreak as his mother struggled to raise his two younger brothers and pay the bills... alone.

A high school football coach, Art Williams didn't know anything about insurance or investments. Most people he knew - including himself - bought just enough "whole life" to cover burial expenses. Life insurance was expensive. And growing up in Cairo, Georgia, in the 1950s, nobody had much money. People just worked hard... and got by.

Then, four years after his father's premature death, a cousin introduced Art to a little-known financial concept called "Buy Term and Invest the Difference." The conversation revealed two shocking truths: Term insurance - pure "death protection - typically offered ten times more coverage than a whole life policy... for the same price. Why then did nobody own it or even know about it? The second shock: Most insurance companies offered term but rarely sold it. Why? Commissions! Term was simply too "cheap" to be profitable.

"Wait a second. For the same price I'm paying a month now for a $15,000 whole life policy, you say I could get $150,000 of term? But that's one hundred and thirty-five thousand dollars more!"
"That's right."

The truth about life insurance made Art Williams angry. Why were insurance companies deliberately selling a product that left people poor in their wallets... and desperately underinsured? Why wasn't his father offered a choice between whole life and term? How different his mother's life would be today, if he'd known!

What happened next proved providential: An unexpected opportunity to sell term insurance part-time... The discovery of a vast, untapped market... The birth of a crusade - and a company - that eventually brought a corrupt and outdated industry to its knees.

On February 10, 1977, A.L. Williams entered the marketplace with a mere 85 agents. Over the next 13 years, the "peanut" company grew into an industry phenomenon - a licensed sales force of 225,000 agents, $300 billion in cumulative sales, thousands of offices across the United States and Canada. Controversial from the get-go, A.L. Williams exposed the "evils of cash value" and ingeniously used a part-time sales force to take "Buy Term and Invest Difference" to the people who needed it most - Middle America.

Here, finally, in riveting and unprecedented detail, is the complete story of A.L. Williams - told by "the Coach" himself. From the high school football fields of South Georgia to the heights of commercial glory in the New Orleans Superdome to a shared podium with an American president... This deeply personal account reveals how A.L. Williams took on the political, scheming world of the traditional life insurance industry to make "term insurance" a household word.

Full of heroes and villains, amazing victories and dashing defeats, this book is a must-read for anyone who's ever dreamed of building a team, of winning big, of doing what others said couldn't be done.