Professional keynote & seminar speaker using the wisdom & persona of Forrest Gump to inspire individuals and companies to self motivate and control own destiny.
Grand Opening Day in Monterey, CA (March 29, 1996).
It was March 29, 1996 … exactly sixteen years to the day.
That was the day that I first professionally performed as Forrest Gump.
It was the Grand Opening of the first Bubba Gump Shrimp Company Restaurant in Monterey, California.
Here’s an abbreviated list of highlights that have happened since that day.
GUMP! What’s Your Sole Purpose in this Army?
When Forrest Gump joined the Army and arrived at basic training, his Drill Sergeant bellowed into his face, “GUMP! What’s your sole purpose in this Army?”
Forrest answered carefully. “To do whatever you tell me, Drill Sergeant!”
The gratified Drill Sergeant commended Forrest on his most outstanding answer and referred to him as gifted – with an I.Q. of a hundred and sixty.
Forrest was crystal clear about his sole purpose in the U.S. Army. Being crystal clear about your sole purpose in life makes living a lot easier.
So … what’s your sole purpose in this life?
Which one came first?
Everything is a matter of perspective.
The answer depends on the unique way that you are looking at the problem.
Math and science questions have definitive answers – your perspective doesn’t matter in those cases.
But in philosophical and human behavior questions (and chicken behavior questions) – it’s all about one’s perspective.
The right answer for you may be the wrong answer for the next guy. And that guy’s right answer may be the wrong answer for you … and vice-versa.
So my answer to the historical circular cause and consequence question is strictly based on my first-hand experience. With that caveat, I can now definitively give an answer to the age-old question: which came first … the chicken or the egg?
Do you have a good system to process incoming information?
My last post discussed information overload and my contention that it’s the job of the communicator to help busy (and overloaded) people understand your message by keeping things short and sweet … and to the point.
Short and sweet will work great when you take 100% responsibility for communicating your message to others.
But what about when others are communicating to you? What happens when they don’t take the time to effectively organize their message? What do you do when they back up a dump truck load of information and simply raise the bed and let the entire contents fall directly on top of you?
In that case, you need an information filtering system.
Here are five ideas to help you develop your own information filtering system.
Are you trying to handle too much information?
How do we effectively communicate our ideas in today’s world of information overload?
Has everyone become stricken by some degree of Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD)?
Or has the barrage of information that originally started sixty-plus years ago with television and commercials—and has now hyper-accelerated to our smart phones and tablet computers via websites, URLs, emails, and webinars—simply worn us all out? And let’s not forget the twenty-four hour news cycles with bloviating pundits yelling over each other in talking points and mindless clichés.
Here’s the good news.
Stories of Gumption is a regular column that profiles individuals or businesses that admirably demonstrate Gumption as we define it. These are the stories of real people who exhibit gumption in overcoming personal challenges, and validate the spirit of Gumption during their journey. Let’s take inspiration from those who seize 100% personal responsibility and show us how to live a life that exhibits gump-like values, gump-like behaviors, and gump-like results … and are worthy of applause!
Last Saturday, I was invited to speak at Lakeland Feed’s 2012 Employee Kickoff event. My task was twofold: Help focus the employees on the primary objective for the coming year. And secondly, showcase Lakeland Feed as the great company it is to all the employees and their families.
Lakeland Feed’s mill and main retail outlet is located in Hamilton, Montana.
Lakeland Feed has experienced steady, consistent growth for more than a decade since being purchased by owner Mike Pflieger. The growth has hyperaccelerated during the past three years as sales have doubled during this period. Lakeland just received one of the seventy-five 2012 Blue Ribbon Small Business Awards® by U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
At its core, Lakeland Feed has created a business model based on gump-like values.
Lakeland Feed’s forty-plus employees demonstrate gump-like behaviors on a daily basis.
Lakeland Feed continues to produce gump-like results on a daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly basis.
Here are several reasons why Lakeland Feed has been successful and consistently strives to Function with Gumption.
The ‘Thinker’ is doing what he does – working hard at thinking.
The first principle of Gumption is mindset. Your mindset is how you think. When you Function with Gumption, you take 100% responsibility for your thinking.
Thinking is hard work.
Being responsible for your thinking is hard work.
Being in control of your thinking is hard work.
So … thinking is hard work.
Here’s why …
Have we become a nation of individual small dreamers as a result of our educational system?
Last week Seth Godin published a 30,000-word manifesto titled Stop Stealing Dreams. It’s free and available as an eBook or in several other electronic forms. I recommend you get a copy, read it, and forward it to a friend.
Seth lays out the case for overhauling our current educational system. Not just fixing the current system, but radically overhauling and creating a transformed, new system that is aligned with today’s world and tomorrow’s needs. It makes use of technologies that are now available. It jettisons many of the ideas and practices that still exist today by relying on the old argument: But that’s the way we’ve always done it. Stop Stealing Dreams doesn’t present a full solution, but it lays a foundation for a needed discussion on educating our future workers.
Here is the premise of Stop Stealing Dreams.
Who wants to be a fake, an imitation, or simply one who mimics another?
I never like saying that. I never liked telling people that my job was an impersonator.
Somehow, I never wanted to be pretending to be someone (or something) else. I wanted to be me.
What are some synonyms for impersonate?
406.396.4611 | steve@speakinggump.com 
Forrest Gump is a fictitious character created in the book Forrest Gump, Winston Groom (1986) and the movie Forrest Gump, Paramount Pictures (1994). Steve Weber has been a Tribute Artist portraying Forrest Gump since 1996. Although Steve Weber has worked for the Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. under license as Forrest Gump since 1996, nothing herein is intended to imply sponsorship or affiliation with either Paramount Pictures or Bubba Gump Shrimp Company.
