#861 Johnny Cakes

A BIG SHOUT OUT AND HEARTY WELCOME TO ALL THE GREAT PEOPLE I JUST MET AT MORGAN STANLEY. THANK YOU FOR WELCOMING ME INTO YOUR BRANCH AND GIVING ME YOUR RAPT ATTENTION.

Now here is this week’s blog:

I lost my friend, John Sentner, to cancer several years ago. John and I worked together for many years and used to meet for breakfast often. I called him “Johnny Cakes” because at these breakfast meetings John would always order a big stack of pancakes.

The two things I want you to know about John is that he had an unrelenting drive to help others and that he was an excellent salesperson.

John was a big guy with a big personality to match. Everyone loved John.

This need to continually help eventually landed John at the top of the heap in The Benevolent Protective Order of Elks.

In over three decades with the Elks, John used his great people (sales) skills for many worthy projects but was most proud of his participation in the creation of camp Moore. Camp Moore is a sleep away camp for disabled kids. John worked tirelessly to get that camp funded every year and make sure those kids had the best experience possible. After we met and he learned about my little girl Alicia, John also made it his mission to get the Elks to adopt Cooley’s Anemia Foundation as a charity they would get behind and contributed generously to CAF for many years.

Why do I tell you about John and the nights and weekends he spent volunteering with the Elks on programs to enrich the community and improve the lives of children? Because John was a gifted, professional salesperson, who used his talent for the good of others.

By the way, professionally, John was consistently ranked in the top 10 of a very talented sales team of 80+ and earned a great living…selling to other business people who also volunteered their time with NJ Elks.

John didn’t join the Elks to expand his database of potential clients and increase his income. John joined the Elks because he saw the good works they did and wanted to lend his talents to be a part of that.

But that’s the way of the universe. You can’t really give anything away. As I tell salespeople in every talk I give, Superman could have busted through walls and robbed banks, but he didn’t. He used his powers for good.

If you’ve got super people skills and you’re not offering them to a charity group, perhaps today is the day you will stop to think about who you’d like to help.

Johnny Cakes eventually became the president of NJ Elks, and his legacy of help is well remembered by all who knew him. And, oh, by the way, he made a bunch of money in sales.

Own your sales gene…