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#Post#: 47--------------------------------------------------
First Within, Then Without
By: IMPACT360 Date: June 13, 2015, 5:45 pm
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There is a story I like so much. The barbers and
hairstylists of the United States were about to
have their national convention. They wanted
people to appreciate their profession and
wanted to give Americans a better image of
their profession. They hired a young Public
Relations executive to handle the job and help
in packaging the convention.
The young man thought of a very brilliant idea
and went to work immediately. He went down
town the city of New York, to the slums, and
picked up a young man who obviously was a
street urchin, popularly called ‘area boy’ here,
who was looking so unkempt. With clothes that
were tattered and soiled. His hair was unkempt
and his beard dirty. The guy listened to the
young executive’s offer, and since there was
some money involved they bargained and the
area boy agreed to the conditions.
The young executive took him first to a
photographer’s shop and had some snaps of
him the way he was; dirty and unkempt. Then
he gave him a face lift: a steam bath, a shave
and an hair cut, and took him to the
photographer for another round of snaps. But
he was not finished. The young executive took
the boy to town and got him professionally
made suits, shirts, ties and shoes. Then he had
a third round of photographs snapped.
On the day the convention started, the young
executive positioned three life-size
photographs of his subject in the lobby of the
hotel, so every one who came in saw the
transformation that had happened to the man.
And he wrote at the top of those pictures, “See
what the Barbers and Hairstylists of America
can do to a man”. And the story immediately
hit the headlines across America.
For effect, the well-suited area boy was
positioned at the hotel lobby to shake hands
with people as they came in for the convention.
The strategy worked. The campaign was a
success. The Manager of the Hotel was touched;
he fell in love with the young man and decided
to do something to help him. He decided to get
the area boy a job. He made some phone calls
and it was agreed that the man should start
work with one of the manager’s friends. So he
had an agreement with the man to come back
on Monday to resume. However, on the agreed
Monday, he expected the man all day but he
didn’t show up. The next day, there was still no
sign of him. When the young man didn’t show
up after a month the manager forgot about
him.
After some months, they were going through
their store, when the manager saw the picture
of the man again and then decided to go down
to the slum to look for the guy. He had the
picture of the guy, and he kept asking but
nobody knew the man. Then after one hour it
occurred to him that he was holding the picture
of the area boy after he had been cleaned up.
So he went back to pick the picture he took
before he was cleaned up and within a few
minutes the man was located.
The message in the story is this; the barbers
and hairstylists in America can change the
outside of a person in a few hours but if they
don’t change the person’s inside, the person has
not yet changed. Although the young man was
changed outwardly, inwardly he was the same
old street urchin.
When I move around this country and see the
way people behave, the way they treat the
environment and the way they treat other
people, it occurs to me that until we invest in
the minds and hearts of our people, there is no
way we will be able to get them to live in a
developed system. True change in this country
must begin in the minds of the people. The
government may budget a large amount of
money, they may repair roads and build good
ones, put street lights, build airports, but until
there is prosperity in the minds of the people,
there will not be prosperity on ground. And
whenever any structure that looks like
prosperity is erected, because of the people’s
mindset, they will depreciate the structures on
ground to agree with their mindsets. The
greatest investment we can make is investing
in our thinking level.
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