What Motivates You? Challenge - Long-Term Goals | Lantern Group

What Motivates You? Challenge

One of the biggest motivators for me is when I’m being challenged. My friend and sometimes collaborator Paul Schoening used to do this to me all the time when we worked together. He would go out and sell something that we hadn’t done before and hand it off to me – “here, figure out how to do this.” It drove me crazy…but also motivated me.

One time in the mid 1990’s he sold a team building program that involved teams building boats out of cardboard, plastic and duct tape. He had seen it somewhere…

Of course, we had never done it. We were going to be doing this in a month in Puerto Rico…thus the challenge – how to put the program together to make sure that it delivered what we had promised.

So I created a boat model and had to test it to see if it worked. Of course, this was in March in Minnesota and there was still snow on the ground. So I asked another friend who had a mini-van to help me transport the boat to a stream that wasn’t covered in ice. We trudged through the snow and I braved sitting in this cardboard boat wrapped in plastic and duct tape in the stream.

It floated (whew!!)

The program was ultimately a success and we ended up selling many more of these team building sessions.

What I remember was the motivation that I had in overcoming the challenge. I spent a lot of time working through how to do it and think about the various aspects of the program and how it would play out. I was fully engaged.

What motivates you? Let us know by leaving a comment below.

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1 Comment

  1. Paul Schoening

    This story motivates me!

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