Vincent Van Gogh: “a picture without a frame is like a soul without a body”

 

Winston Churchill: "Success is the ability to move from one failure to the next failure without loss of enthusiasm"

 

 

The salesman in the souk

 

A salesman was accompanied to the souk by his boss one day to have his performance assessed. He was nervous as he approached the stall of his first prospect, but summoned up all the confidence he could find as he laid out his wares and made his pitch. The stallholder heard him out, but when he asked for the sale, turned him down flat.

He packed up and moved on to the next prospect and went through his pitch again feeling that it might have gone better this time, but again, when he asked for the sale, he got a firm rejection. The boss stood by smiling as he packed up and moved to the third stall, and as he got the third rejection; and to the fourth stall and through the fourth rejection.

As they walked through the marketplace looking for a fifth prospect, the salesman looked over his shoulder at his boss expecting a dressing down for his failures, but instead he saw that the boss was not just smiling now but grinning. He couldn’t stand it and said: “boss, we’ve been in the market all morning and not made a single sale; I’ve been turned down four times in a row and yet you smile as if it’s the happiest day of your life; I don’t understand.”

The boss replied: “I am happy, because I know that every time one says ‘no’, we are one closer to the one that will say ‘yes’...”

 

Coming soon: The King, the Pauper and the grain of rice....