Every week when you arrive at Exercise Inc for your 20 minutes, we ask you to give us everything you have. If you do that, you will be successful at becoming stronger and gaining more energy. It’s only 20 minutes, but we want you to give us your best the entire time.

During the month of September, I challenged our coaches to give us their best for one month. For five weeks I asked everyone here to give everything they had to getting as many new people in the door as possible. The more people who come through our door, the more lives we can change.

To motivate everyone, we all read one of my favorite books, The Go-Getter by Peter Kyne. The book is a parable about a young war veteran, Bill Peck, who persuaded the owner of a logging company to let him prove himself with a sales assignment that everyone knew would only lead to failure. When Peck beats his quota, he earns the ultimate opportunity and the ultimate test: the quest for the blue vase. Drawing on such classic values as honesty, determination, passion and responsibility, Peck overcame all obstacles to find the vase and launch his career as a successful manager.

If you are in business—especially sales—you should read The Go-Getter. In fact, if you need motivation to lose weight, live healthier or achieve a seemingly impossible goal, this book will inspire you. It only takes about an hour to read, and after that hour you will feel like you can do anything if you really want to.

So we had a contest to see who could get the most new prospects in the door in one month. To motivate everyone, I decided to give away some really cool prizes. The top prize for the contest was a MacBook Pro and $100 ITunes gift card. There were also cash prizes of $400 for second place and $150 for third place. In addition to that, anyone who got more than 10 new prospects in the door also got $125 bonus on their paycheck.

The stakes were high, so I asked our coaches to move out of there comfort zones and do outrageous things to get people in the door at Exercise Inc.

I was blown away by what happened. We had eight coaches who scheduled 10 or more new prospects.

Kyle Truitt, our newest coach, got 18 new prospects in the door, and won $150 cash.

Sid Morris also got 18 new prospects in the door. Because he signed up more of them than Kyle he won the second place prize of $400 cash. The real neat part? Sid donated $300 of his winnings to Imagine Church in Westfield. How cool is that?

Amanda Gatlin was the real Go-Getter. She sat down with her two daughters and her husband and as a family they decided to support her efforts to win the contest because the girls wanted a new laptop. Amanda was unstoppable in her quest to be No. 1. She refused to take no for an answer, and she got 35 new people in the door at Exercise Inc in five weeks. Yes, you read that right, 35. When we started the contest, I never imagined anyone would get close to that number, especially someone who works here part-time and has three small children.

Amanda won the MacBook Pro, $100 ITunes gift card and the $125 paycheck bonus. Most importantly, she got a blue vase. If you read the book, you’ll understand why the blue vase is so important.

Here is Amanda and her son, Gavin, receiving the first place prize.

As a result of this contest, our coaches scheduled 129 consultations in one month. That number is amazing.

This contest proved to all of us that anyone can be a Go-Getter and do amazing things if they really want to. You just have to decide to focus on what you want and go get it.

Stay Strong!

Bo Railey

P.S. Check out Exercise Inc’s Facebook page to view a video of Amanda telling her daughters she won the computer.