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My thanks go to my mother, who has always believed in me; to Renée, my wife of eighteen years and now friend for life, who has always stood by me; and to our precious daughter Amber, who is our proudest accomplishment. They have all been my own personal Slight Edge. A special thanks to Jim Rohn, whose teachings have had a profound impact on me. It’s often his wisdom you hear in these words. To John David Mann, my co-author, who brought his craft, passion, literary magic and good cheer to the project and made our book shine. To John Milton Fogg for his insights and his support, and for helping to get the ball rolling. To Todd Eliason and Reed Bilbray who brought their brilliance to this revised edition. To my close friend Stuart Johnson for helping this book, a dream of mine for many years, to finally come to pass. To Amber Olson who has been the driving force in bringing to light this revised edition.
I arrived at the Phoenix airport about 6:30 in the morning. Having time before my plane left, I looked around to see if there was a place where I could get my shoes shined. There was hardly anybody in the airport at that time of the morning. I strolled around. Before long, I found a shoeshine stand. It was open; a woman in her mid to late forties sat in one of the customer chairs, absorbed in a paperback book. She was dressed in black stretch pants, a black apron and a white shirt. She seemed like a nice, solid person. I walked over to her stand. The woman greeted me warmly. She was friendly and happy—not always an easy way to be before the sun comes up, I thought. She got up, set down her book, first carefully folding over the corner of the page she’d been reading, then took up the tools of her trade and pleasantly ushered me into the chair. Her stand was located right next to a service door through which a constant stream of maintenance men and janitors came and went. Got to be at work by seven, I guessed. As they passed by our shoeshine stand, every one of these men stopped and exchanged greetings with the woman. She knew them all by name and they knew hers, too. It was clear they were all friends.
I noticed the book she’d been reading. It was a popular novel, something to pass the time, to survive the stretches of occupational boredom by living vicariously in someone else’s imagined romance. There was a little heap of them sitting dog-eared by the wall. What if, instead of spending ten or fifteen minutes here and there, tucked in between customers, sinking into the pages of those forgettable novels, she had spent the last five years reading books that were genuinely life changing? What if that little stack of books included Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich, Stephen Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, or David Bach’s Smart Women Finish Rich? Where would she be today? The shoeshine woman was a hard worker. Good with people. She knew how to read and clearly enjoyed doing so. She was a superb communicator. She obviously had the talent, personality and basic life skills to accomplish a lot more than just living off tips from shining the shoes of people who could afford to buy their kids new uniforms and tickets to Dallas. While this woman with the wonderful personality continued shining my shoes, I was watching her in my mind’s eye, seeing her on a plane to Texas surrounded by giggling, excited, happy teenagers, seeing her being successful in so many different ways, in so many areas, making such a difference in her own life and the lives of so many others, if only … what? What was missing? Feelings welled up in me, a mix of frustration and sadness. I felt for a moment as if I were going to cry, and I wondered, Why are you so moved by all of this? You’ve seen this before a hundred times—why are you so affected by this one instance?