What I Learned in French Class (8/23/14)
The material you need as a salesman can literally be inspired from anywhere and anything. I found that point out purely by accident when I was at my first meetup meeting with my new French conversational group. I had been meaning to find some way to brush up on my French, and it didn’t look like Sigrid Agren was going to be walking through my front door anytime soon to help me work on my vocabulary. So I joined a local meetup group that had just started up.
It was a great collection of people! There was a woman who had driven up about an hour to take part in the meeting. The facilitator was an American who had married a Frenchman, and had perfected the language. A woman who was setting out on a six week trip to study abroad in Montpellier, France. A mother and her two daughters who moved to France from Vietnam shortly after the war, and had now migrated to the beautiful beaches of the Florida Gulf Coast. Our organizer was a man with considerably strong language skills who started the group because he wanted to perfect his French. Finally the last attendee for this initial meeting was an expat who picked up French bouncing around some of the countries of northern Africa.
So many good stories were shared, and I know there will be even more to come. I had the opportunity to realize how rusty my French truly was. I think I would equate the experience to banging a sheet of corroded steel with a sledgehammer to try and knock off the excess rust. It was a great time, but my ah-hah moment came as we were walking out the door.
“Why don’t you bring a translation of the synopsis of the book to the meeting, and we can make that the point of discussion for the day.” You know I never would have thought of that in a million years.
I’m not advocating you infiltrate random groups and clubs in hopes of leaching sales of of them, that’s unethical. However, if you genuinely want to be a part of a tribe and there’s potential synergy based on their interest, then I say have at it. There really are opportunities for success just about everywhere, if you are willing to use your imagination to seek them out on your little journey through life.
