A Tribute To Jim Rohn

It is such an honor to be with you and to see what a wonderful job they've done to put this together. And I've been thinking for hours, what would I say in the seven minutes that they've given me? And then the floor drops out from underneath me and I disappear. And what I thought, because of my experience with Jim and listening to him, working with him, traveling with him, which I'll talk about in a second, what I concluded is Jim was a great American. And for me, that's one of the best accolades you can give a person. He was a great American. And he was a great American because he taught the American dream. And there's no country in the world that has the word dream after it. There's no Russian dream or Chinese dream or Japanese dream. No, there's. There's only the American dream. And that's what Jim taught. And he taught it over and over again. And what was the American dream? The American dream was that you could start with nothing. You could start from nowhere. You could come from another country and have no friends and no contacts and no language, but in America, you could make it if you did certain things. And he taught the certain things that you could do. And anybody who heard Jim Rohn for the first time, and we know that a light goes on in your mind, you say, oh, my God. And you have this experience. I can do it. I could do that. I could do that. And what did he say? It wasn't very complicated, but we went back and listened to it over and over again. He said, set some goals. Decide what you want to do, what you want to. Where you want to go, what you want to be. Write it down. Keep notes. Don't try to keep everything in your mind. One of the wonderful things he said affected Darren, affected me, is take responsibility. Stop blaming other people for your problems. Just say, I'm responsible and I can do it. And then he said, learn. Learn everything you can. That's what Tony and I and everybody in this business have said over and over again. You can learn anything you need to learn. If you take action, you can learn anything you need to learn to achieve any goal that you could set for yourself. That's the most wonderful thing because it is so empowering. It says that no matter what anybody else has accomplished, you can accomplish it. And he told us that over and over again. And interesting enough, you go and listen to him, and you listen to him again, and you've heard this again, and you've heard it over and over, and just keep listening, because what he taught was universal wisdom and timeless truths. And the universal wisdom and timeless truths connect with us at a very deep level. They release something inside of us, and we can hear it over and over. As Vic was saying, going back and listening to these things that he's heard for years. Well, let me tell you a little bit about my experience with Jim. We knew each other for 20 years. I began speaking and became successful. And then I had the great honor of speaking on the same stage with Jim. And we would split the day. I would speak in the morning or the afternoon, he would speak in the afternoon or the morning. And we would travel and go from city to city. So I would be watching him and he would be watching me, I assume. And we would have breakfast together and lunch together, and we'd go out for dinner together and we would chat together. And I found out something very interesting about Jim. Jim is what is called an introvert extrovert. And I say is because he's still up there. He was an introvert extrovert in that when he was speaking, he was an extrovert. He spoke and he spoke not in a flashy way or anything else, but when he was not speaking, he was very quiet. He was what they call self contained. He was kind of thoughtful and he was always practicing what he preached. He always wanted to learn. He was like a learning machine, like a sponge. And I remember the first time we flew together and we got on the plane, we'd been chatting before we boarded the plane. And we got onto the plane and we're chatting. And as we came to our seats, he looked at me and he had this almost scared look, you know, like, oh my God, is this guy going to talk to me for the whole flight? And I smiled at him and I took out something to read and he took. I just remember it was this great relief. He never said a word. He took out his. And he took out his material and he began to read. And we just sat there on the flight, flying across the country, him sitting there reading, me sitting there reading, not saying a word, because he just was always reading. Always remembered and respected that. Well, you look at Jim and you say, what does Jim stand for? And many things, but one thing that I never forgot is Jim taught something that you're all familiar with. He said, it's not what you get in life, but what you become. And he said the most important thing about fulfilling the American dream, becoming a millionaire, achieving all your financial goals, is not the money itself, but the person that you have to become. And in order to be worthy of earning that kind of money. He said, the interesting thing is if you become that kind of a person and you lose it, you can make it back again because you're the person who knows how to make it. And so the most important thing in life is character. It's not things. And Jim taught another thing, which you sometimes only realize what he was teaching. Much later, he taught another thing. And he said on the screen there, he said, there is no joy in things. Say it this way, is that there's no joy in things or money. You buy a Rolls Royce, it gives you no joy. If you have piles of money, briefcases full, it gives you no joy. There's no emotion, there's no connection there. He said, the only connection comes from the people that you love, enjoy, care about, the relationships that you have, the people that care about you. That's where all the joy in life comes from. And it's unfortunate many people become so preoccupied with getting things, they don't realize they get the things and there's no joy in them. And so what Jim said is the most important things in life, as you know, with all thy getting, get character. And I think that the development of character is the most important goal that we have for ourselves. And I was reading the Wall Street Journal this morning and there was a letter written by a man who died at the age of 87. And he wrote it at the age of 17. It was his goal for his life. And I thought about Jim today, and what he said was this. He said, I hope that when I grow up. He said, in my adult life. He's 17 at the time. He is. That I make a difference in that I inspire a lot of people to be better, that I inspire them to be more than they are, that if I leave this earth, that that's when I leave his people will be better because I was on this earth. And when I think of Jim Rohn, I think of a man who inspired us and continues to inspire us in every word we listen to and every voice we hear and every picture we see. He inspires us to be more than we would ever have been in the absence of. Of that inspiration. And I think that is a wonderful thing. And I will never stop appreciating you for that and thanking you for that because he's inspired us to inspire other people to believe that they can do it and they can get their piece of the American dream as well. So the message that you can do it, that you have the capabilities within you, is something we need to live up to every single day. Thank you very much, Sam.