“We are always hungry for more.”
The following is a true story about a young man who started his Total Life Changes journey almost 20 years ago. This young man started in the shipping department, and he was very content with that job. It was easy to understand and easy to do because he loved working with his hands. He also loved the fact that he didn’t have to think much while doing the job. He clung to that job!
I remember that this young man had been approached a couple of times to help with customer service calls. He made it very clear that he absolutely did not want to take phone calls or talk to anybody. I think I even remember that once he threatened to not show up to work at all if that was going to be expected of him.
The business was growing, but there wasn’t enough work in shipping to keep this young man busy for several hours, so it only made sense that he helped take calls somehow. Then one day Jack Fallon came up with a compromise for him. Jack approached this guy, who had made it very clear he did not want to talk to people on the phone, and offered another option. Jack said to him, “can you just answer the phone and ask for the person’s name and number and the reason for their call?”.
It seemed simple enough; all he had to do was answer the phone, ask for the person’s name and number and the reason for the call and then pass the note over to Jack for a return call later. Eventually, the young man reluctantly agreed. The reason why he reluctantly agreed was that he really didn’t want to do it, but Jack was his friend, and he decided he should just try to help.
I remember the first day he answered those calls; he was nervous. Once he had a few calls under his belt, he was better, though. It seemed easy enough, and it was going well. Then one day, shortly thereafter, a phone call came in that changed the direction of his life and the direction of TLC.
The call that came in was from a nice lady, and she just so happened to have a shipping question. At that moment, the young man was faced with a moral dilemma. Although he didn’t really want to talk to anybody and didn’t really know the answers to most of the questions, he actually knew that he probably could find the answer to this one.
It was one of those moments that can impact your life in either a positive or negative way, but you only have a few seconds to decide. Have you ever had a situation like that? Well, I have, and if you haven’t figured it out by now, that young man in this story was me! That’s right; I was the one who was faced with that moral dilemma with that question.
I remember I paused for a few seconds before answering. I was nervous because part of me told me to just take the message down and move on to the next call. And another part of me told me that I should help because I probably knew the answer to the question. Ultimately I chose to put the nice lady on hold and find the answer to her question. It was a simple question: “did my Nutraburst® order ship yesterday?”.
I put her on hold, walked over to the shipping manifest and found proof that her order had been shipped the day before. I went back to the phone and delivered the good news to her. What happened next changed my life. This lady started screaming with joy. She was so very happy and kept on telling me how the product had changed her life and made her feel so much different. She had been worried that the product did not ship and she would run out of her vitamin by the weekend.
She was so happy, and you would’ve thought I told her she had just won the lottery. I remember she was so happy, and I also remember how good it felt to be part of that call. This was something I did not expect, and it felt so good. You might be wondering at this point why does the core value “we are always hungry for more” have anything to do with us?
Well, that’s simple; it’s because when I felt that feeling of helping make someone happy and being part of that process, I just knew I wanted to feel that way again. Over the course of the next several weeks, I hoped and prayed every time the phone rang, it would be a shipping question so I could answer it. It always made me feel so good to help, and I found myself always hungry for more!
Eventually, I realized if I could learn more, I could help answer all the questions, not just the ones about shipping. I committed to studying and learning as much as I could because I wanted to help people more often and feel that feeling that was helping me feel alive as often as possible!
I often think of that moment, and I realize that if I had not decided to put that nice lady on hold and help find an answer, my life might be so different today. I am so glad I made the right choice, and I think I have thanked God at least 100 times since. Eventually, it wasn’t just phone calls that I was helping with. I ended up learning and doing everything because I could never get enough. No matter how many calls I took, how many tasks I did, or how many hours I worked, I found myself always hungry for more.
Amazingly, almost 20 years later, not much has changed. I find myself, to this day, addicted to helping people and the feeling that I get from it. Now I am blessed to have so many amazing people around me that are doing the same, and it inspires me to be even hungrier.
At TLC, we sometimes have to stop at the end of the day because it’s time to go home. And other times, we momentarily pause and celebrate when something great happens. We even go on a vacation with our friends or family once in a while. But rest assured that the very next day, we are back at it with 100% enthusiasm.
This is because we are always hungry for more, and if you made it to the end of this message and you’re still reading this, then I’m pretty sure you are too. God bless you, and thank you for reading this week!
