There’s no substitute for hard work and getting your hands dirty. Fortune favors the bold. Nothing worth having comes easy.
You know the old sayings… you might even think they’re worn out.
But these ideals have defined the American Dream… and the trucking industry, which has fueled so much of this great country’s wealth. Here’s what experience has taught me:
Those sayings are true.
I’m Jay Wommack, the founder and CEO of Vertical Alliance, and I’ve got another cliche for you:
A man with something to prove, driving down a long dirt road, looking for answers.
I came from a family of entrepreneurs, raised by a father who didn’t believe in rescuing me from bad decisions. “Root hog or die” was one of his favorite sayings (it comes from the Great Depression… means that when things get tough, you have to get tougher). Dad believed that anyone could succeed if they had the heart and the grit to do what it takes.
The ideals he drilled into my head gave me big ideas and big dreams of changing the world for good. But life doesn’t care about your big dreams: and you’ve gotta put food on the table. So, I worked everything from oil fields to stock brokering (I’d studied the stock market since I was 12). It was all part of my search for something I could do that would make a real impact. I was always trying to predict what was around the next bend in the road.
That adventurous, entrepreneurial spirit is how I found myself drawn to the newest frontier of business in the early 2000s: the internet. I started a website called “BubbaJunk.com” – a place where people could buy and sell anything from tractors to toasters. The idea was good (I like to think it was ahead of its time), but financially, it just wasn’t working.
And so there I was: down to my last dollar…
I had been here before. I wasn’t scared so much as frustrated. I knew I could make something great. I knew I could make the world a better place. I just didn’t know how. It wasn’t an easy time. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t starting to have some doubts…
I found myself driving down a long dirt road…looking for answers. Maybe even a sign. Sometimes, when you don’t know what to do, God gives you just that.
And then I saw it in front of me, clear as day: a bumper sticker.
“HELP. We need truck drivers.”
Thats how I learned there was a problem in the trucking & transportation industry: the answer I’d been looking for.
Suddenly that entrepreneurial spark I’d inherited from my father was a roaring fire. Instead of buying and selling junk: my website was transformed into one that would help companies recruit truck drivers. Over time, I realized getting drivers on the road was only one half of the equation: companies needed help training them.
That’s how INFINITI Fleet Safety Training was born. It has grown into a family of colleagues who share those homegrown American values of hard work and determination. Some people might call us stubborn. I call us persistent.
And with our growing company, that dream I had of making a mark on the world finally became a reality. Because I know that these training solutions don’t just help companies become more prosperous–they help save lives. In fact, we estimate that our solutions have saved the lives of more than 11,000 people.
And that, I think, would make Dad proud.
