My, life partner, Mimi, like many Chileans, is addicted to radio – it’s on all the time in the background. Personally, I like silence, but having the radio on does mean that every so often I encounter something I might not otherwise have come across.
A while ago, I heard some snippets of conversation with a remarkable man, Graham Webb. Graham left school at fifteen with a final report that read, “Graham is lazy, silly, bone idle and apparently content to remain so”. After applying unsuccessfully for sixty two jobs in sales and marketing, he got a job as an apprentice to a local barber. Sometime later he did get sales job and gained the distinction of the man who sold the most rice pudding in the UK. Following that, despite being not very interested in hair, he built up a huge salon, hair care product and training business in the USA.
What came across on the radio was that he seems a thoroughly decent, likeable man, whose success may be an example of practising purposive drift. Though in his case, the sense of purpose must have been very intense, since he had to overcome the difficulties presented by incontinence and misshaped feet, the result of spina bifida that was not diagnosed until he was in his thirties and had already established a successful career.
You can hear Graham in conversation with Libby Purvis and others, here or buy his book about his experiences here .