7 Years with Jim Rohn. Mentored by a Master

16 Pages·2014·0.27 MB·English

by  Chris Widener

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Widener, Chris
7 Years with Jim Rohn: Mentored by a Master ISBN: 978-1-61339-688-9
1. BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Personal Memoirs 2. SELF-HELP /
Personal Growth / Success 3. SELF-HELP / Motivational & Inspirational
Contents
Jim Rohn One-Year Program
2004 Weekend Leadership Event
12 Pillars
Jim Rohn’s Last Interview
Working with Jim and Zig
Lessons from Jim
7 Years with Jim Rohn
Mentored by a Master
by Chris Widener
Seven years before Jim Rohn’s passing, I already had a pretty decent career
as a motivational speaker and a leadership expert. I was traveling all over the
world speaking to great groups like General Electric, Cisco Systems, Harvard
Business School, and I was doing quite a lot of events. I had already written my
first couple of books, had built an email list of 100,000 people, and life was
really great. I was also doing a little bit of ghostwriting for some famous authors
and of course my own writing, and then, out of the blue, I got a phone call.
The phone call was from Jim Rohn International; specifically, it was from
Kyle Wilson, the president of Jim Rohn International. Kyle asked me if I would
be interested in coauthoring the Jim Rohn One-Year Success Plan with Jim
Rohn. Now, you probably bought these lessons specifically because you love
Jim Rohn, so you can imagine how you would react if someone called you and
said, “Would you like to work with Jim Rohn?”
You would say, “Yes. When do I need to be there?” In fact, I did say, “Yes.
When would you like me to come down?”
Kyle said, “Tomorrow.” I actually bought an airline ticket, got on an
airplane, flew to Southlake, Texas, where Jim Rohn International was located at
the time, and began discussions about working on the Jim Rohn One-Year
Program with Jim Rohn. That was the beginning of a great relationship. It was
the beginning of a great season of my life. I was able to learn some great lessons
from one of the most legendary speakers of our time, work closely with him, and
do conferences with him. It was a very exciting time.
Now, let me start by saying that the subtitle of this message is “Mentored by
a Master.” There are lots of people who are running around saying that they were
mentored by Jim Rohn. To the degree that listening to audio programs and
reading books means that you were mentored by them, certainly. Jim was a
mentor to millions of people, but there were very few people who were able to
actually work with him on a close basis. One of the things that I am most proud
of and most thankful and grateful for was that I was able to actually do work and
produce products and offerings with the legend himself.
Now, let me say that if anybody were to be able to say that they were the
closest with Jim in a professional and friendly manner, it would certainly be
Kyle Wilson. Kyle is, in my mind, the greatest promoter in self-help history. He
has worked with many of the legends, but the pinnacle of his career was taking
over, running, and executing Jim Rohn International, and in the middle of
running Jim Rohn International, is when he brought me on to begin to work with
Jim.
Kyle had an extraordinary relationship with Jim, and through my relationship
with Kyle, I was able to open this door up and also work with Jim. I was able to
coauthor the Jim Rohn One-Year Program, which has sold many copies and has
helped many people over the course of the years. I was also able to do things like
emcee the 2004 Weekend Leadership Event. Then, one of the most pinnacle
highlights of my career was coauthoring Jim Rohn’s last book 12 Pillars, which
is my best-selling book. Let me talk a little bit about those things.
Jim Rohn One-Year Program
The first was the Jim Rohn One-Year Program, and it was really quite
amazing. I think it’s one of the best personal development products ever made.
In one year we went through all sorts of great lessons from Jim, myself and all of
the other experts we brought in. What was really amazing was to be able to see
Jim, over the course of a year, walk step-by-step through so many of these great
topics like relationships, finances, sales, leadership, personal development, and
time management. It was really extraordinary to be able to learn these steps from
the master himself.
2004 Weekend Leadership Event
The second product that I mentioned was the 2004 Weekend Leadership
Event. Now, this is what I consider to be the all-time greatest personal
development product ever created. It was done in three days during August, and
we not only had Jim Rohn, who was the centerpiece of the weekend, but we also
had Brian Tracy, Denis Waitley, Charlie “Tremendous” Jones, and about seven
or eight other amazing speakers. That was a weekend to never be forgotten. In
fact, still to this day, I have many people who come up to me or post on
Facebook or Twitter and say, “I was there. Best weekend of my life.”
It was really a great privilege to be the host and the emcee of that event Kyle
put on and then to have it turned into a program which has become, in my mind
at least, the best personal development program ever created. That is quite an
accomplishment and quite a privilege.
12 Pillars
The last is, of course, the 12 Pillars. I’ll tell you how 12 Pillars actually got
made. I had been writing with Jim creating the Jim Rohn One-Year Program, and
during this time, I also wrote a fiction book called The Angel Inside:
Michelangelo’s Secrets for Following Your Passion and Finding the Work You
Love. So I went back to Kyle, and said, “Kyle, what would you think if we did a
fiction book like The Angel Inside,” which had become a New York Times and
Wall Street Journal bestselling book. “What would you think if we took the
principles from the Jim Rohn One-Year Program and put them into a story
form?”
Little did I know that would become my bestselling book, assuredly because
Jim Rohn’s name is also on the cover. It was, again, an extraordinary privilege to
be able to work with Jim and the team at Jim Rohn International, to put together
a book that synopsizes all of these great lessons into the lessons of the books, 12
Pillars, The 12 Pillars of Success.
Jim Rohn’s Last Interview
There’s one other product that I’m very proud of and that is Jim Rohn’s Last
Interview. Of course, we didn’t know at the time that it would become the last
interview Jim Rohn would ever give. On my television show, I brought in a lot
of great successful people in the business world, the sports world, and of course
the personal development world. I was able to ask Jim many of these great
questions and had a personal interaction that has now been put down in history
for everyone to be able to listen to. It was very, very exciting for me, and again,
it was such a great privilege.
Almost everywhere I go, people ask me what it was like to work with Jim
Rohn. In fact, just last weekend, I was doing a conference call. They had a
thousand people on the line, and I was going to do my teaching on influence,
leadership, success, and motivation. As they introduced me, they finished, and
then the host of the conference call said, “Before you get started, we know that
you worked with Jim Rohn for those last seven years of his life. What was it like
to work with him?”
Working with Jim and Zig
I’m going to spend a little bit of time and just tell you what it was like to
personally work with Jim Rohn. I was actually able to work with two very big
legends in the speaking industry for a period of time. One was, of course, Jim
Rohn. The other was Zig Ziglar. Anybody who knows anything about personal
development will know that the short list of legends includes Zig Ziglar and Jim
Rohn. They were both wildly successful. They both touched tens of millions of
people in their lives, but they were very different people.
A good lesson for me to learn was that you can make a huge impact across a
wide variety of personality types. For example, Zig was just a gregarious guy.
Onstage, he was go, go, go, and offstage, he was go, go, go. He loved to mingle.
He would always walk into a room, crack a joke, shake a hand, and slap a back.
That’s just the way he was.
Jim, on the other hand, was more of an introvert. If we’ve done any sort of
studying of Jim Rohn, we know that he grew up as an Idaho farm boy. When you
think of a farmer, you typically think of a quiet guy who just goes about his
business and gets it done, day in, day out, producing a harvest. That really was
Jim. He was also raised by a minister, and I think that a lot of the emphasis of
just quietly going about your business, humility, and those kinds of things really
came about in what I saw from Jim Rohn.
Jim wasn’t the kind of guy who liked small talk with a crowd. I don't know if
he really felt uncomfortable or not. I never asked, but he was more of an
introvert. It was a great lesson for me, and I think it could be a great lesson for
you if you’re an introvert and are saying, “Well, I can’t really go out and make a
big impact because you really have to be a gregarious extrovert.” The reality is
that you don’t. Gregarious people like Zig can make a big, dynamic impact, but
people who are introverts like Jim can also make a big impact on the world.
In fact, I’ve often used the term professorial to describe Jim. When he gave
his talks, he would stand there with his glasses and he’d tilt his head down and
look across the top of his glasses, almost like a professor would. He was like that
onstage; he was like that offstage. That’s again another lesson from both Zig and
Jim; they were both the same person onstage and offstage, which is exactly what
we want to be. That’s integrity.