I have built businesses all my life. I have built 15 different companies. I believe the greatest business people in the world are entrepreneurs, because entrepreneurs get it done now. They don’t put off until tomorrow what they can do today. They’ve got energy, they’ve got a belief system, and they’ve got a passion for what they are doing. I used to think in my younger life that the big business people, the guys who run these big companies, were “the bomb!” But now I know that “the bombs” are the ones that build their own companies. People like Bill Gates, the college dropout. Michael Dell from Dell Business Systems with one quarter of college under his belt.

Then there is Sam Walton. Sam Walton is to me the greatest business person that has ever lived. Think of what he did. High school graduate from Bentonville, Arkansas. He had an idea about going out into the world of retail, and providing greater value at lower prices. He had to compete with the big guys – Sears Roebuck and Montgomery Ward. In fact he went to Sears Roebuck and Montgomery Ward. He told them about his idea, and they threw him out! He’s in the capital-intensive business of retail, and he goes and starts Wal-Mart in the 1950s and builds it into the biggest company in the world. His company employs more people than anybody in the world. When they list the richest families in the world, his wife and 2 sons are always on that list.

Mr. Sam died in 1992. He built a business on a solid foundation which was VALUE. He created value for the consumer, value for the customer. He did not do it with smoke and mirrors, or silver bullets. He did it by caring about the customer and giving them value, and because of that all he had to do was build stores and spread the gospel. He didn’t have to sell them anything. And that is something for all of us to understand – you people listening to this message or reading this blog – you want to make more money. You’ve tried eight zillion different businesses, you’ve drank every juice there is to drink. You’ve chased every silver bullet there is to chase, and you’ve forgot the fundamental thing that is most important – if you’re going to make it in business at any level, you’ve got to make sure that your products or your services have great value. You’ve got to make sure that the people you partner with are the right kind of people. People of ethics. People who care about you, that care about the consumer. People that care about the customer.

In my 15 businesses - businesses that have generated hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars in revenue - I have never sold anything to anybody. I’ve never told anybody what they should do. We’ve built businesses on products and services that had great value, and we built it on partnerships with people who really did care about us, and we cared about them. We cared about our prospects and our customers. And as you look around out there, you are not going to make money or build a business by just wanting to make money and get a commission. You are not going to be successful in anything – sports or business – if you don’t have a passion for what you are doing, and you cannot have a passion for what you are doing if you don’t believe in what you are doing. If you don’t have products and services that you understand and that you can believe in, that are really going to deliver value, then you are not going to have that passion. Are those businesses out there? Are those products out there? Are those services out there? Yes, but they are not the loudest people out there. You’ve got to go and search for those companies. You have to go look. And you cannot change directions every other day or every other hour, and wonder why it is working for other people but not working for you. There are no silver bullets out there. There are no smoke and mirror solutions. There are no get-rich-quick schemes that work. You’ve got to understand the value of your products and services, and then you’ve got to build a business on fundamentals. Because if your products and services are good enough, you don’t have to sell them! What do you have to do then? You have got to expose them to more people. Isn’t that great? You don’t have to sell. You don’t have to twist people’s arms with a closing technique. You just have to find ways to communicate your message in more formats, and today there is more opportunity to do that than ever before. You can leverage technology to be able to do that. So you say, what kind of company are you talking about? There are a lot of companies and a lot of products that you can believe in. Let me tell you about one.

About 12 years ago I wanted to go out and help small business people, and provide some valuable products and services for them. One of the things I realized is that all small business people needed access to lawyers, and I found out about a company called Pre-Paid Legal. Yep, a network marketing company. There are a lot of those out there, aren’t there? You ever been pitched by a network marketing company? I’m sure you have. But this one was uniquely different, and still is. They had products that really worked. They had products with great value. They built the company on making the legal system affordable for all Americans! Think of this – somebody can go and spend $16 a month, $20 a month, and get unlimited access to top rated lawyers. My goodness, is that a value statement? I think so. They built this company on a legal concern. But then they added Group benefits where groups could go and tap into that legal service. They added Identity Theft protection. They added a Small Business plan with me where we give small business people unlimited access to lawyers and unlimited access to small business consultants for $39 a month or $49 a month…depending on the size of the business and where it is located. These are products that stand the test of time. They withstand the scrutiny of value. This is a great company that has been in business for 35 years, doing it right, providing business opportunities for people who really want to build a business properly, and that means understanding the product, believing in the product, and believing in helping people. That’s what it is about. Does everybody make money? No. Why? Maybe their belief system is not right. Maybe their belief in the product or their understanding of the product or the value is not quite right. But this is a company that provides the opportunity to build your own business the right way.

There are others, but I just want to strongly suggest to you that if you really want to build businesses at whatever stage of life you are in, and to have success and to do better than you are doing today, make sure that you have products that you can believe in. Because if you can believe in them, you are going to have enthusiasm and passion about them. The whole notion of business is the same as life. You’ve got to care about the people that you are working with. You’ve got to care about the customers you have acquired. And you’ve got to want to make sure that you are doing the right thing by them.

I’ve played it many times but I want to take you back to January 31, 1976. I had a friend named Phinizy Timmerman. Isn’t that a real southern name? He was Chairman of the Board of Graniteville Mills in Graniteville, South Carolina, which is about 10 or 15 miles from Augusta. He was a member of Augusta National and would invite me to come play with him in the off season of my football days because in ‘76 I was still playing professional football with the Minnesota Vikings. Phinizy Timmerman, “Phinny” as we called him, was a real competitive little guy who wanted to beat me in the worst way.

We played 36 holes of golf that day. On the 33rd hole, number 15, a very difficult par 5 at Augusta National, Phinny and I hit our third shots. (Normally a second shot for the pros.)

I knocked my ball in the pond and Phinizy Timmerman pared that hole. By making that par and with me making a double bogey, we were even for the day. We came to the 16th hole, par 3. He was hitting a 7 iron. I was hitting a 7 iron. He hit his 7 iron about 2 feet from the hole. He had a kick-in birdie, which would have put him 1 up on me with 2 holes to play. I took a 7 iron out. I hit the ball just beyond the 16th pin and it sucked back in the hole for a hole-in-one on the legendary 16th hole.

I’ll never forget it because as we were walking there’s a pond in front of the 16th hole. I told Phinizy, “Phinizy, your putt is good.” And then I proceeded just to kind of walk across the water because I felt omnipotent. Obviously after that he couldn’t bring his club back, and I won the next 2 holes to win the match.

But so much history comes on that 16th hole. When Tiger Woods chipped in from above the green a couple of years ago, that lead him to his victory. Jack Nicklaus hit a very important long birdie putt when he was 46 years old to win (I think) his 6th green jacket, and I got to make my hole-in-one at August National on the 16th hole.

But now to this week. I met Tiger Woods when he was 4 years old when I had a television show called “That’s Incredible”. Tiger and his Dad were on the show, and he was hitting balls into the net. I thought it was phenomenal that a young man or a kid this young could hit a golf ball as well as he did with the form that he had. So I followed his career. Did I ever think that he would achieve what he’s achieved? Obviously nobody could have imaged that. But in his 32 years, he has been able to dominate a sport like no other person in the history of any sport.

I remember when he won his first Masters when he was 21 years old back in 1997. Now nobody that young can play this very difficult course which requires a lot of knowledge of the greens and the fairways and the subtleties that are hidden in this great great test of golf. And it takes great experience. But at 21, he teed it up, and he won by 12 shots — unheard of against the greatest players in the world. And you know what he did after that? He went back to Butch Harmon, his coach, and said my swing will not hold up and allow me to win every tournament. So, we’ve got to work on my swing. He reconstructed his swing. He went back and started working to get better.

We look at Tiger Woods and there are other people who can hit the ball as far. They can putt as good. They can chip as good. They are bigger and stronger. But this young man has done it with a great belief system in himself. He understands that he‘s not going to win tournaments with smoke and mirror solutions or with silver bullet solutions. He’s got to do with it with fundamentals and he has worked all of his life on his swing. Even after he wins the most prestigious tournament in the world by 12 shots, he knows his swing is not good enough. So he works to make it more fundamentally sound. He gets help, and he practices and practices and practices. And what he’s accomplished is beyond all of our imaginations. All of us across the world cannot wait to see him this weekend make history yet again. Every time he tees it up, he’s making history. And all of us, no matter what part of the world we’re in, no matter what social strata we’re in, whether we’re golfers or non golfers, are intrigued by this really unusual human being. We watch him accomplish things that are just beyond our wildest imaginations.

So I’m going to enjoy Tiger Woods’ this weekend. I’m going to especially enjoy him when he gets to the 16th hole, and I’m going learn something from watching this young man. The one thing I know about Tiger Woods and how he handles himself — he appreciates America. He understands America’s no more perfect than his golf swing but it’s far and away better than the next best thing and he lets his fundamentals work for him. He believes in what he does and also understands that he never reaches perfection. He has got to work to get better and that’s what drives him and should drive you and me in everything that we do. In the contentious political state that we’re in now, when there’s all kinds of indecisiveness, it’s nice to watch a young man who is really a great role model for all of us — not just in watching him play golf but in the way he conducts himself and lives his life and the way he gives back to the country and to the world that he’s a part of.

Let me tell you about a vacation that I’ve taken every year since 1990, and I took it again just a few weeks ago. My wife and I go to St. Barth, which is an island in the French West Indies, 1852 miles southeast of my home in Atlanta. GA. The atmosphere is very relaxed and very French. On this island there are no Marriott’s, there are no high rise buildings, there are no golf courses. Nobody wears a coat, nobody wears a tie. There are great beaches, and a pretty harbor town. It’s very laid back, and of course, great weather.

We were there for two weeks. I did not play golf, I did not read a book, I did not watch television, or listen to the radio. What I did was interact with the most diverse, interesting people that I have ever been around in my life. These are people that I’ve gotten to know with my wife, Linda, over the last 10 to 20 years, and we’ve kind of grown with them over the years. They all come from different backgrounds and cultures, and the most interesting part of all of this is that we actually talk to each other, and we actually listen to each other.

Let me give you a flavor of who they are:

• There is a wonderful couple from San Francisco — big real estate developers. One day I asked one of our friends, “How successful are they?” The response was that they own half of California. I asked which half? He replied, “Doesn’t make any difference…does it?!”
• Then we have their friend, Walter, from Little Rock, Arkansas — college graduate from North Carolina and one of the greatest beach dancers I’ve ever seen. He’s the owner and publisher of multiple newspapers, but when you get down to it, he is a good old Southern Boy.
• Joan is a famous author from Washington, DC. She comes every year with her mother, Pearl, who lives in New England. Pearl, by the way, is the only competition my wife has. Pearl is my girlfriend! She is 96 years old, and swims the waters of St. Barth so well that she out swims everybody. I cannot wait to see Pearl every year.
• Then we go a totally different direction with Louie the Lip and his wife, Rockin’ Robin from Fire Island. Louie the Lip, as you might have guessed, is an Italian guy, and Robin is from a prominent Jewish family from Philadelphia.
• From Chelsea, New York City, we have Barry and Becca. Barry retired at age 51 — he’s now 67. He was in the dress business and Barry is a sun worshiper. He lays in the sun from 7:00 in the morning until 7:00 at night. I didn’t speak to Barry very much for a number of years because I thought he was weird. He’s got this big old hair that he ties behind him, and he’s got bulging eyes! But he’s beautiful, and his wife Becca is even more beautiful. They are just real people. I told Barry at the end of this trip, “Barry, you are the most well-adjusted human being I have ever known.” Because he knows who he is, he is comfortable in his skin, and he is a uniquely wonderful person with his own opinions — and he’s very proud of his opinions!
• To round out the group, we have Chief, who is the Chief of Police for a small town in New England, we have Ben, one of the biggest real estate developers in the country who I’ve known for 30 years, and Steve, a very famous 67 year old actor, writer and producer in Los Angeles.

Obviously, all very diverse people. And here we were, for two weeks together. We meet on the beach in the morning, we have lunch together, we have dinners together. And we talked, and we shared ideas. We shared beliefs. Nobody there tried to tell other people what they should believe. Nobody was there trying to convert somebody to their belief system. But boy, how enlightened we were.

Not once did we have an argument. We had interesting differences of opinion because we all came from so many different backgrounds. I don’t know — I guess some were Democrats, some were Republicans, some were conservative, some were liberal, but it didn’t matter because we weren’t trying to make the other person believe what we believed. I wanted to know what they thought. I wanted to know what their ideas were and what their belief systems were. I learned from all of them. We all learned from each other, and we enjoyed each other coming from the diverse backgrounds that we all came from. It was a United Nations group right there. And it just proved to me once again that if people are not interested in trying to tell other people how they should believe, how much better off we could be. We could learn to enjoy our differences and then find out that we do have a lot of things in common.

In this contentious political time we are in now, we have the Democrats on one side, the Republicans on one side, and now of course the inner workings of two candidates on the Democrat’s side that are tearing each other apart. We’ve got liberals. We’ve got conservatives. We’ve got independents and some in between. And we are hearing we should all come together. But what people really mean is that if I am liberal, believe as I believe. If I am conservative, believe as conservatives believe. I don’t really want to come together. I want you to come to my belief system and abandon yours.

I had a great two weeks. Probably the best two weeks of my life being with these people, because we didn’t try to tell each other how we should believe. We enjoyed the differences that we had and we, truly in this two week time, came together. Isn’t that a novel idea?

I cannot wait to see these same people next year, to grow a little bit more.

The good news about seniors is, we are living longer than any generation before us. Listen to this data. The average life expectancy of an American has doubled since 1900. A senior woman who reaches 65 years old has an average a life expectancy of 87. A senior man reaching 65 years of age will have an average life expectancy of 85 years. So we have seniors living longer, and yet we hear all the doomsayers say that people living long is somehow bad news. They say it is going to strangle the economy. They say that social security will run out of money soon and that taking care of older Americans is going to be a problem.

I am going to suggest to you that this kind of thinking is WRONG! I am a senior. I am 68 years old. And I am better today than I was at 58, at 48, at 38 and at 28. You know why? Because I am still engaged and productive. I work every single day.

But let me speak to you seniors out there. I don’t want you seniors going down to Orlando to The Villages and spending the rest of your life playing croquet. You are more likely to die quicker than others. I find my happiest and most fulfilled senior friends are the people who are the most active. They are engaged in their businesses and their communities. They are all doing something productive with their lives, rather than play croquet or golf or tennis or swim, or whatever it may be. They are the ones who are healthier and are living longer, more productive lives.

I’ve had a friend of mine that called me a few weeks ago. He’s a guy I was in business with back in the 60s. And as we talked I noticed that he sounded vibrant and full of enthusiasm, talking about business and this and that. After we hung up, his 40-something year old son called me, and I said to him, “How old is your dad?” He said, “My dad is 84 years old.” Eighty-four years old! He is a testament to staying engaged. He is as involved with that business today as he was when he was in his 40s and 50s and 60s. He is healthy, he is active, his mind is fresh, and he gives us invaluable input and the value of his experience. He helps us be so much better.

We have football coaches today, be it Bobby Bowden or Joe Paterno, who are still coaching football in their 80s. There is no reason to get to your senior years and quit. What do you have to live for? I want to be able to get up in the morning looking forward to helping somebody else in their life, to bringing value to somebody else. Does the work have to be for commerce? No, it can be for charity, for your community, but find something that you love to do. And when you have that in your heart and soul, in the business world, in the public service world, in working with charities or other people, it gives you a reason to live. And living is what we have to do. It is not just sitting in a rocking chair and waiting for the gavel to fall. Be productive. Add something to this economy. Add something to this nation. Add something to your community. Add something to your children’s lives, to your grandchildren’s lives.

And you children and grandchildren who are listening to this or reading this, go to your parents and grandparents, and encourage them to stay engaged.

People have talked about Brett Favre and how he played the game, his zest for life, how he played the game wide open, and all of that is true. But they missed maybe the most important part of Brett Favre. It’s not whether he was the best quarterback that ever lived, or had the strongest arm, or whether he was the one who played with the most passion. This is a young man that really overcame some demons and changed his life. Many times we think that we talk about change, but we don’t do anything about it. We make the same mistakes over and over again, and blame them on everybody else. But Brett came to the National Football League as the number one draft choice of the Atlanta Falcons. He came here and barely spent a sober day, if you listen to what Brett says about his life as a rookie. He missed practices, he was late to this, he was late to that. He drank himself out of Atlanta, Georgia, according to Brett Favre. He had a problem. And he was traded to the Green Bay Packers. You never trade a quarterback of this talent to another team. They are too hard to find, and he may arguably have the greatest talent of any quarterback that ever played. But they traded him. It wasn’t because they were dumb football people, but they thought this guy was so demon-ridden that he could not make the changes that he would need to make to be the accomplished quarterback that he was. But to his credit, he did. At a young age, he changed who Brett Favre was. And I think that is the greatest achievement he made, because without doing that his life would have been a shambles, no matter what his football career would have been. But he changed his life and he became a great person, a great friend, a great father, a great husband, a great son…. Just everything you would like to have in a person regardless of his athletic appeal. And that is the thing that I admire about Brett Favre’s career more than anything else. Oh, he played with great passion, wide open reckless abandon, strong arm and would fling an under-handed side arm, over-handed…whatever it took to help his team win. And he sure gave us a lot of memories.

But with Brett’s retirement, we are back into the endless topic of who is the best quarterback that ever lived. Well, I read an interesting article in the New York Times just this weekend by Dave Anderson, who is in his mid- to late 60’s. He’s been around the NFL forever. I knew him when I was playing, and he wrote a great article called “The Best Quarterbacks: A Juicy But Fruitless Topic.” He said “to try to rate the best quarterbacks from, say, No. 1 to even No. 5 or No. 10 is silly. Too many different eras, different teams, different coaches, different teammates, different opponents, different schedules, even different rules. The best quarterbacks are not only apples and oranges, some are peaches and pears.”

And he went through who he thought were in the top 16. He had all the regular names – Joe Montana, Johnny Unitas, Otto Graham – but he went on and made 16 selections. Thankfully and luckily, he put me in the top 16. But that’s not the point of the story.

After he picked the 16, he said you can say these 16 qualify for the best quarterback…but then he added that you can add a another couple of guys if you wish. He says he didn’t add Y.A. Tittle, or Dan Fouts or Bobby Layne or Norm Van Brocklin, but you could add them also. The point is well taken because there is no way to say that one person was the greatest quarterback of all time.

But in Brett Favre’s case, it’s really easy to say that here is a man that commands our respect for the changes that he made in his life that should inspire you and I, and people of all ages, that we don’t have to be like we are. We can be significantly better if we make up our minds to make the changes that we need to make.

Tiger has never, in my memory, endorsed any political candidate or taken any strong political stand. Sometimes people have even criticized him for that. I certainly haven’t. I think he’s done everything right. But I’m going to share with you that I think that very soon, in this historic year of politics in America, Tiger Woods will come out with a strong endorsement of Barack Obama. And I think it would be the right thing for him to do.

It is an historic time – a young black man running for President of the United States of America, with a very good chance to win. And here is an icon of sports who happens to be black, endorsing that candidate. Opra Winfrey had never supported another candidate publicly before, and she’s come out, as she should. And I just believe that the two of these tremendous men, Barack Obama and Tiger Woods should join forces, and my prediction is that Tiger, in the next few weeks or months, will come out with a strong endorsement of Barack. Watch for it.

Let’s take the Democrats – it is historic what is going on there. We have a black man, and we have a woman who are running for the Presidency of the United States of America, and either one of them have a wonderful shot at accomplishing that goal. On the Republican side, it is interesting, isn’t it? We have a 71 year old, experienced war hero. We have a Baptist preacher out of Arkansas who has come out of nowhere with no money, little organization and he is still in the race. Isn’t it interesting that the people who raise the most money, Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani, are out of the race already? We always think you can buy an election. The Republicans have proven that you can’t buy an election. Both Romney and Giuliani have gotten out. And what is left are two people that really didn’t have a lot of money. In the case of John McCain, he had to get rid of most of his staff last summer because he was running out of money before the primary even started, and Huckabee never had a staff to begin with.

Now on the Democrat’s side, there are really only two players, and have only been two players, and both have been attractive to a lot of different people. And they have raised a lot of money. But here we have a woman running for President, and I think that’s great. We have an African American running for President, and I think that’s great, too. And people are not just talking about their gender or race – they are talking about issues. They are listening to Barack Obama talk about change and new ideas, and they are hearing Hilary Clinton talk about being prepared and experienced enough to lead the country. There is discussion going on across the board. We’ve got the granddaughter of Dwight Eisenhower, the great Republican President and general, icon of the Republican party, supporting the black Democratic candidate, Barack Obama. Is that healthy? Absolutely!

We’ve got Joseph Lieberman, Senator Lieberman, well respected lifelong Democrat, Vice Presidential candidate who ran with Al Gore, supporting Republican John McCain. Man, this is what it’s supposed to be about, isn’t it? It’s diversity, it’s different thought processes, it’s people who come from different backgrounds who feel they have the experience and knowledge and integrity to be the President of the United States of America, and it has opened discussion up in every café and every nook and cranny of this country. And that is good.

I haven’t heard hatred, I haven’t heard anger – I haven’t heard “I hate that guy, or I hate that person because they are conservative, because they are liberal, because they are a Democrat or a Republican” – I really haven’t heard any of that. And I don’t want to hear any of that as the Democrats pick their candidate and the Republicans pick their candidate. It’s democracy at its best. And I am happy to be a part of it because I can assure you in all the conversations I have with my friends, we are having open discussions about this same issue.

And you know what else? I haven’t decided who I’m going to vote for yet. It might be any of the four candidates. I’m going to wait to make that decision until I get more information, and I hope you look at this as a very serous decision for you to make as well as I. Do it with your own convictions and go do the research on what these people stand for. Then vote. Vote for your convictions. Not because some movie star told you who they like or because some athlete tells you this is the guy, or because some businessman says you should vote for somebody. Vote for what you believe in, and when every American does that, we’ll make the right decision.

We were playing the Pittsburgh Steelers in New Orleans in the Super Bowl. I’m not sure whether it was Super Bowl 7, 8 or 9 but it was one of those Super Bowls. I was on the field before the game with my center Mick Tinglehoff — from Nebraska, played 17 years and never missed a game. He was a great, great player who weighed 240 pounds and had an average build. We’re out there warming up before the game and I’m looking over the Steelers linemen - Mike Webster their great center; Steve Courson their great guard - and they had their sleeves rolled up. Short sleeved shirts on a cold day. And they had bulging arms. Bulging biceps. And I said to Mick, “What are they doing, that you’re not?” I had no idea that they were on some kind of steroid or human growth hormone. Later we found out they were.

A few years ago, I was with a guy who’s a former Mr. America weightlifter and he was a top executive for one of the big fitness companies. As I walked into one of the gyms that he owned and looked at these men working out, I saw just unbelievably sculpted bodies. He said to me, “See those guys over there?”. I said, “God, I do. It’s amazing.” He said, “well, you cannot get like that - no matter how much weightlifting you do - if you’re not on the juice or if you’re not on some steroid or HGH.” He said, “if you’re not on something like that, your muscles aren’t going to bulge. They transform your body.”

He told me a story about how he got on steroids because he wanted to bulk up. He’d never been on them before. Within a week, he went from bench pressing 400 pounds to bench pressing 600 pounds. But the growth, he said, was amazing. Now I can’t remember the exact numbers, but he said he kept getting stronger; he kept juicing up and eventually he won Mr. America. He had just put on a whole other body. He couldn’t wait to get in front of the mirror and look at himself because he felt that it was just part of him. That is, until he got off the juice. When he got off the juice, he got his real body back again and he looked like he used to look.

Now, we know with all the evidence that’s out there that steroids and human growth hormones are rampant. We first discovered them in track and field. Then we saw them in bicycling. We’ve been made aware that they have been pretty widespread in baseball, with several players recently admitting that they were doing them. And in football, well just look at the players. Do you think it’s not in football? Do you think it’s not in basketball? Do you think it’s not in golf? In other sports?

I’m frightful that if they’d come to me when I was 22 years old and said Fran you can juice up and it’s not going to kill you. You put the stuff in your body you’re going to put on 20 pounds of muscle. You’re going to throw the ball 10 to 15 yards further. You’re going to throw it harder. You’re going to run faster. You’re going to be more physically able to play. I’m afraid I would have probably done it. It’s very appealing to people who want to excel because you’re already competitive. And it’s a problem. It’s a health problem. It’s problem of balancing the field of sport. It’s a problem and yet we have swept it under the rug. We’ve swept it under the rug. Sports writers have swept it under the rug. Coaches have swept it under the rug. Owners have swept it under the rug . And yes, we players have swept it under the rug. Because none of us want to yell FIRE! But yet somebody needs to yell FIRE and bring back the real integrity of sports. It’s not integrity rich if you have one guy with these performance enhancing drugs - and they do enhance performance - and somebody else who’s not on the performance enhancing drugs. It’s also detrimental health wise and the high school kids are on it now too. In many cases, the parents are putting them on it because they now want to get the big bucks that are out there in the world of sports. Yes it’s big business. It’s big money and yet we cannot look the other way. I thought the congressional hearing the other day was just a joke and the biggest jokes were not the participants. The congressmen were embarrassing - up there railing and having their TV time when most of them did not take the time to read the depositions, to look in what was going on or what was not going on. It was shameful and Dan Burton was the most shameful of them all.

I’m going to suggest that somebody needs to yell Fire because if it goes like it’s going, we’re never going to eradicate and get rid of drugs at any level in athletics. It just won’t happen until it becomes important enough to you and me.

I’m going to give you a quote from Boone Pickens, the billionaire oil man from Oklahoma and Texas. He says, “An idiot with a plan will always beat a genius with no plan.” So if we’re into these uncertain times and we’re confused and we’re disoriented, I’m going to suggest you stop right now, and create yourself a plan from this day forward. Write it down, put it together, put your goals down. Write out what you are going to try to accomplish, and then you have that plan in front of you. And you can go and start implementing that plan and stay dogged determined of that plan, and then when you need to make changes, you can make changes based on effort and doing things.

The great sports people, Bill Belichick and other great coaches, have a plan. Great quarterbacks have a plan. And the plan is not always constant, because conditions change. But if you have a plan, you have a base to change from. It’s not just hocus pocus. It’s not just pulling something out of the sky. Because if you don’t have the plan, you’re going to go off in about 20, 20, 40 different directions, and then a month from now, two months from now, you not only don’t know where you are – you’re not having any success – but you don’t even know what you’ve learned in the course of this time because you didn’t have a plan that would tell you if something works or doesn’t work, or part of it works and part of it doesn’t. From a plan, you can make changes that are appropriate changes, which will help your business do better.

Now by making a plan doesn’t mean you are going to procrastinate, does it? Or just stop activity or just stop doing it. But what it’s going to give you by having that plan is that when you create activity and you create that energy and you start doing things, it’s from a base of knowledge that makes sense today in the form of a plan. The plans we had in football – you know, we may start out a game where we want to run the ball. So our plan is to run a little bit off right tackle, a little bit off left tackle, and pass occasionally. But what if they have a 10 man line? Well, we find out that we’ve got to adjust our plan! It doesn’t work at that level because they are doing something that makes that the wrong plan. So we do a little to change the plan. We tweak it. And we throw a little 5-yard pass and all of a sudden we get success. It’s no different in business. It doesn’t mean that the plan you generate is going to be the perfect plan or is going to bring you success. But it gives you a base of understanding of what you want do based on the best information you have today. And it will lead you to better solutions and better techniques and better implementation and it will make you better guided as you go down the path of all the activity you are going to create. So there again, if you are drifting, distracted, disconnected and confused, you’re depressed, don’t be all of that. Stop right now today and have a shot of vitamin C and create a sound plan. This is Fran Tarkenton.

How many times have you heard people come to you and say, “Come partner with me. Come to my deal. I have the greatest ziz wheels, lead generation system, business idea that’s going to change the world. That’s going to change your life. That’s going to make you a billion dollars in about 2 seconds. This opportunity is going to be the greatest thing for you.” Have you ever heard that? Well, that’s what I call smoke and mirrors. That’s what I call silver bullets. And what Tom Brady realizes is what you should realize, and what I should realize.

The person that has made Tom Brady a great, great quarterback is Tom Brady. Tom Brady’s work ethic. His belief system. His willingness to sacrifice. His willingness to do the things it takes to make success. He and Bill Belichick talk about fundamentals, fundamentals, fundamentals. You hear them talk about focus don’t you? Do they talk about things that happened in the past. No, they talk about “we’re just focused on tomorrow. We’re just focused on winning this game. We’re not focused on next season or the game that’s in 5 weeks. Just this game.” And they’ve done that week in and week out. And here they come to this Super Bowl — with what do they have, 17 or 18 victories? And these people with their silver bullets are trying to get you off course and that make you vulnerable because you want to hear how easy it is. You want to hear these silver bullet solutions. And you want to hear that somebody can you give something that’s magic. That way you won’t have to work, do you? Well I refer to them once again as get rich quick solutions, as silver bullets and those never win. The person who is going to make you successful is you. But you’ve got to understand that whatever business that you’re in, it’s got to be about fundamentals. It’s got to be about blocking and tackling. It’s got to be about work ethic. And here is the thing that’s most important — a belief system. The greatest weakness of man is not believing –not believing in yourself–not believing in what you are trying to do. And you cannot be successful without that basic fundamental of believing in what you are doing and believing in yourself. And which brings out “we believe” when we know that we’re doing good things? We know we’ve got products and services that are highly valued. We know in our hearts that we want to help our partners. And most of the people that come to you and me, they just want to rag on us. They just want to leverage us and let us do all the work for them. And you know that’s right, don’t you? Well, we don’t want to be that way. That’s not how Tom Brady has come from a 6th round draft choice out of Michigan.

Do you know why he was drafted in the 6th round? Because if you’re a quarterback coming out of Michigan, a big school like that drafted in the 6th round, the scouts have said after all their studies of you that you’re arm isn’t strong enough. In other words you’re not a good enough passer and your not quick enough because you’re not a good enough runner. But what they don’t see is what’s inside of Tom Brady — they couldn’t see his belief system. They didn’t see his work ethic. They did not see his curiosity and yearn to learn and to get better. And that’s what has to come from inside you. If I could give that to you, the notion that comes from within, that belief in yourself and the belief that you really are wanting to help other people and be willing to do the things — the fundamentally sound things — to help people get better. And with all of that said, it comes from you. But let me add one other thing.

You and I need help. We need partners. We need partners that are rock solid. We need partners that simply do what they say they are going to do. Partners that we can believe in because unless we have really good partners then we cannot get as good as we’d like to get. Brett Favre, another quarterback, 2 years ago at age 36. Here’s a Hall of Fame quarterback who’s talented. His team was 4 and 12. He played in all 16 games. They lost 12 games and won 4. This year same Brett Favre, 2 years older, and they were playing in the NFC Championship game and they won their division. What was the difference? Did Brett Favre just learn how to play football in the last 2 years or did he have more help? Did he have better players? Better teammates? Better coaches? Better systems? Better methodologies? Well, he had all of those things. And that’s what I’m saying to you. You and I have been disappointed in people not being good partners to us. We sometimes get jaded, don’t we? But there are good partners out there. You need to learn how to look for them. Look for the people that have the good hearts, that have a belief system, that are really there. Then you can see who will be a real partner. A partner of 1+1=3. That partner is always concerned about your welfare as you should be concerned about their welfare. When you put those two things: your own belief system, your own work ethic, the understanding of fundamentals, and then how to look for the right kind of partners that can help you leverage your skills and help you grow yourself and your business — then you’re on the way to a successful ‘08 and that can happen for you.