Get Motivated
Visiting Orlando this week was the Peter and Tamara Lowe event “Get Motivated“. For those that don’t know anything about it’s origins you’ll need a little background. For more than 25 years, corporate leaders, Fortune 500 companies, educators, business owners, sales people, medical professionals and a whole host more have been attending Peter & Tamara Lowe’s events, making them the leading seminar business in America. Peter and Tamara co-founded the business all those years ago and since then over 3 million people have attended to listen to the truly great speakers that Peter and Tamara have put on stage.
The list of the rich and the famous is enormous. Five United States Presidents (Bush, Carter, Clinton, Ford, & Reagan) have spoken and numerous world leaders and news makers like Lt. Col. Oliver North, Lady Margaret Thatcher, Barbara Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev. Additionally, there have been entertainers and journalists like Bill Cosby, Goldie Hawn, Charleton Heston, Ed McMahon, Mary Tyler Moore, Christopher Reeve and people from the music world, Johnny Cash and Reba McEntire, to name but two, have given their words of wisdom from the Lowe stage. Astronauts Aldrin, Duke, Kranz, Lovell and Aldrin have spoken along with many stars of the sports arenas, people like Curt Schilling, Brett Favre, Peyton Manning, Joe Montana, Don Shula, Larry Bird, Muhammad Ali, Evander Holyfield, Jackie Joyner Kersee and Jeff Gordon. From the business and literary world such names as Debbi Fields, Seth Godin, Billy Graham, Mark Victor Hansen, Tom Hopkins, John Maxwell, Suze Orman, Tom Peters, Jim Rohn, George Ross, Brian Tracy and I could go on and on. The list is practically endless.
So, having never been to one of these events before I decided that it was time to trot along. The line up was equally impressive, Rudy Giuliani, Gen. Colin Powell, Laura Bush, Lou Holtz, Zig Ziglar, Dr. Robert Schuller, Terry Bradshaw and Tamara Lowe herself.
I found myself arriving fairly early at the Orange County Convention and Visitors Center and it wasn’t long before I was seated in an excellent seat just four rows from the stage. A great view. Lou Holtz, the football head coach, was one of the first to enter the arena and he gave a rousing opening speech about life being the attitude you choose to take. After that Zig Ziglar came on stage. I wrote about Zig in an earlier blog so check that out here. We then listened to former Mayor of New York Rudy Giuliani as he recounted the events of 9/11 and the way the City came together under his leadership to overcome the events of those sad days.
- Rudy Giuliani greets Zig and Jeane Ziglar
General Colin Powell then made his way to the stage and told us about the afterlife of his days as Secretary of State and Commander in Chief and how he can now get a hot dog in New York without being troubled too much. Laura Bush was up next and she went into quite a bit of detail about the events of September 11th and how deeply they affected her husband President George Bush at that time. She spoke from the heart of the upset she felt when the media attacked her husband and also, about how her family is now doing now the spotlight has moved away from them.
Overall it was well worth a visit and a day away from the office to hear the stories told by these people and of the one common theme they shared… a real determination to succeed. To not let bad times affect them and to fight back in adversity. The seminar was also well timed as we start to pull out of the recession…if we choose to believe the media that is! Around 10,000 people attended the event and hopefully the message sank home to those that were there… “don’t rely on the Government to pull us out of this… it’s you, the people, who will do that”. And I guess, we always have and that we always will.
