There is an interesting story concerning John Kanary, which would be very appropriate to share with you here, since it illustrates both the power of "imaging", as well as "persistence".

Although I had known John Kanary for a couple of years and had talked with him on many occasions, I certainly did not know him as intimately as I do at the time of this writing. It is important that I bring this out here, as I will be referring back to it shortly. The incident I am about to relate, took place in 1971.

I was living in Chicago at the time and had just completed a speaking engagement in Edmonton, Alberta. When I returned to my room, there was a telephone message for me to call John Kanary, in Belleville, Ontario, Canada. I returned the call and after a couple of minutes of small talk, John said it was rather important that he meet with me, as he had something he wanted to discuss and he preferred not to "go into it" on the telephone. I asked John to wait while I looked over my calendar; it was, in the vernacular - packed tight. I was busy, to say the least; almost every day I had either a seminar or speaking engagement, in a different city in North America. I explained this to John and told him that although I would love to visit, I really didn't know when I could. John was persistent, so I said: "listen, I'm leaving Edmonton for Chicago tonight at midnight. To get to Chicago I have to go through Toronto. I'll arrive there at 7 am. I'll have to change terminals and I leave from the second terminal, one hour and fifty minutes later. I'll be happy to talk to you then, although I don't promise to be too alert after flying all night".

It is also worth mentioning that John had to get up early enough to drive the 125 miles from Belleville to Toronto, to meet my 7:00 AM arrival. I remember that all John said was, "I'll be there".

The next morning I sat in the airport coffee shop and listened as John explained how he "wanted to do what I was doing" - he wanted to conduct seminars. He also explained that he was prepared to pay the price, whatever it might be.

As I listened, it was like hearing a popular song on the radio - you keep hearing it, over and over again. In almost every seminar I conduct there is a man or woman in the seminar who wanted to do "what I am doing". I've heard it in Biloxi, Mississippi, Butte, Montana, Los Angeles, New York, Moncton and Montreal - it was an old tune. Now, here I was in Toronto with a friend who, as I have already mentioned, I did not know that well, and he was asking what "he had to do".

As I was listening, the same images that I had with all the others were flashing through my mind. I was remembering al the traveling, the fear of standing up and speaking in a large hotel ballroom crowded with people who wanted you to get them excited, but who were mentally putting you on trial at the same time, thinking "does this guy know what he is talking about?" In many situations, such as a sales convention, you had forty minutes from beginning to end in which to build rapport with a few hundred strangers and get them excited about themselves.

The years of staying up nights reading and studying, the years of learning by attending seminars all over the continent, the years of working for next to nothing to prepare oneself to hold the attention of a group of people all day in a seminar, there were the images racing across my mind. It had taken me eleven years to get to that point.

But how do you say, "no, you'll never do it", when someone like John asks you, especially when the essence of what you teach is - you can do anything. Yet, how can you say "yes", when everyone you know, with the exception of two or three others beside yourself, cannot earn a living in the public speaking business, unless they are a celebrity (and that is a whole different story)?

When John Kanary finished, I told him what I had told all the others: "Yes, you can do it, but it's tough. Make sure you understand that, John. It's tough. You will have to do a tremendous amount of studying, because you not only have to know what to say, but you must also have the answers to a thousand and one questions arising as a result of what you say. Some of the questions will come from professional people, medical doctors, engineers and lawyers, who in most cases, know what they are talking about. So you not only have to be right, but confident as well, or you will be discredited with your entire audience; and that only has to happen a couple of times and you're "out of business".

You not only have to study these ideas, but you must use them as well, or there will be no conviction in your talks. (Not to mention the fact that you will be walking physical contradiction to what you teach.) It is next to impossible, for example, to have a sick person teaching "health".

You must develop showmanship and voice control, and on and on it goes. In Short, John, for everyone who makes it, a thousand fail miserably."

Usually when this is explained, the person says they still want to go ahead, but you never hear from them again. John was no exception, in one sense - he still wanted to go ahead. However, in every other way, he was an exception. I did see him again. I told him what to read and what to do and he read it and did it. John read hundreds of books - he "devoured" tem. He narrated them onto tapes and then played the tapes in the car. At his own expense, he followed me all over the country and sat in hundreds of seminars. He wrote thousands of pages of notes and studied them diligently.

Finally I would have him open and close the seminars. Then he would conduct part of a seminar himself. In the beginning he would be so full of fear, he would be soaking wet. Sometimes he would be so worried about what the audience thought of him, that he would forget everything he knew and, as you know an audience can be very cruel. But despite all this, he continued. (Keep in mind this was costing him money, he was not being paid).

John Kanary had built an image of himself doing "what I was doing" and he WOULD NOT QUIT. He was PERSISTENT and it worked. It always has and it always will. Today he has earned the respect of many of the world's largest corporation. He has spoken in almost every major city in North America. He has also earned more in one day than he was earning in a year when I first met him!

So, if someone with numerous degrees after their name tells you IMAGE-MAKING and PERSISTENCE don't work, just look John Kanary up and ask him. He will tell you, "I know you can do it, because I DID IT!"