Do you have an umbilical cord? You know, that thing down there by your belly button, do you have that? You know, most of us had it removed, well, you know, cut, snipped when we were born, but there's a bunch of us who didn't. How could that be?
We're gonna talk about it. You know, most of us live very well without our umbilical cord hanging off of us. Oh, and by the way, this is the day that I'm talking, well, the day, I don't edit. The Daily Grateful and I am Michael Croes.
And I had a Tim Tam tonight. Tim Tam's are made in Australia. My sons, Zach, and I found them at a store in downtown Clearwater several years ago. And they were the only place that had them.
And he and his girlfriend went out and found some today and he brought them home and I had one and had one over a year. It was delicious. Anyway, back to the umbilical cord. Most of us, you know, I, you know, when all of my children were born, well, I would watch them because I was there.
And they had their umbilical cord, snipped right there, tied off, not, you know, put into a knot, boom, in the belly button. We all have that, right? Some people didn't, as it turns out. By the way, with my son, Zach, that was a cesarean section.
And the doctor pulled him halfway out and said, here, take the rest of the skid out of here. So I did. And the umbilical cord's here and the doctor said, do you want to cut the umbilical cord? I said, hell no.
No, I'm screwed up. And I'm holding him, right? I've got, I've got my hands underneath his arms and he's looking at me like, it's the doctor said, bring him over here. So the doctor and the nurse, they had, you know, get it tied it all up.
And then I took Zach over to the table. Like I did with all of my other children, I cleaned them up, the nurse, you know, supervised and told me what to do and all of this good type of stuff. And I put his first diaper on it as a matter of fact, but all my kids first diaper on them. I'm the one who did it, proud of that.
But anyway, the umbilical cord was taken off as Zach, does not have one, but some people do. And what do you say, Michael? There's people wandering around with their umbilical cords. And the answer to that is yes, which goes back to another story, which happened in the 70s.
Yeah, I'm trying to think, when in the 70s, this happened early 70s, 71, 72, right there. I went to the seminar in St. Petersburg. And I went to this thing and it was a sales meeting and they were trying to sell me something.
And I was working at Ace on the ball, pest control in the lawn care department. That was my first real job. So it had to be in 1972. And someone had come to our office and invited us to go to the seminar down in St.
Pete. And my boss didn't want to go. So he said, you go. I said, okay, I'll put on my tie.
You don't put on a shirt, put on a tie. I'm like looking good, right? And I go down there and I went to this building. And by the way, the building has become very important to me because a friend of mine later opened another business in there and then I had another friend who opened a business in that building.
I got all kinds of stories about that building, but that's yet another thing I'm digressing and wandering off in different directions. I go to this building and these people are trying to sell me some. They want to sell me onto a program where I would get a record album every two weeks. And it was going to cost only $5 a week, $20 a month.
It's what it was, about the payments rolling $5 a week. I remember that. And the record album, but what was on the record album? You say, was it the Beatles?
Was it the Rolling Stones? Was it Beach Boys? No, they were motivational speakers. And these were all of the big time motivational speakers of that time.
Norman Vincent Peale was on there. Zig Ziegler was on there. There was just a bunch of them lined up. And I can't make a commitment for the company because I'm but a lowly employee.
But they said, well, I tell you what we'll do for $5. If you just give us $5 right now, we will give you a starter album. And album, you see, remember you used to buy motivational tapes or motivational things and they came out and set tapes? I guess this was before set tapes were big.
I don't remember, it was a record album. And the record album was by a motivational speaker named Cabot Robert. And he was a motivational, as a matter of fact, he was one of the big metal from Toastmasters. And he was an award-winning, you know, he did what he did for a living.
It was a public speaker, went out for a living. He's long since gone. He was born in 1907, I think he died in the 90s. But I brought that album home and I put it on my stereo because I was still living at home mom and dad at that time, right?
And usually on my stereo, I was listening to the Beatles. And not this time. I went home and I listened to Cabot Roberts. And Cabot Roberts, to me at the time, seemed very old, seemed very old, very old voice.
I don't have an old voice. He had an old voice, but he said something on that record. He said, and I only listened, believe it or not, I only listened to that record one time. And then I took the record and he gave it to my boss.
But out of the whole record, both sides, side A and side B with this whole talk by Cabot Robert, here is what I remember that he said. He said, I need to tell you something. Most people are wandering around, and I don't know if he said the word most. He said, but there was a number of people that were wandering around with their umbilical cord in their hand, looking for a place to plug it in.
So what he was saying is that the people were looking for leadership. They were looking for somebody to look up to. It could be the government, it could be an employer, it could be a political tribe, it could be, I don't know, it could be a guru, yeah, a guru. And which brings me to another song.
If you're looking to find you a guru in an effort to make you a new you, what's hit today? Tomorrow may be passing, I'm just wandering off in all kinds of directions. But that's stuck with me because I have met people like that and so have you. There are some people who, for whatever reason, do not want to take, and I hate to use the word responsibility, but they don't want to have original thoughts, and they don't want to just work things out.
And I've always had this personal philosophy that I got, and I think I got it from my Uncle George. I do, I think I got that from, this is from my Uncle George. And my Uncle George always said, when we were faced with something that was hard and difficult, he said, you can always find a way to make it work. And he would smile when he said that.
Always, you can always find a way to make it work. And I said that to my children. I remember saying that to all my kids, when they're doing like a homework project or they were doing something, and I just can't be done, this can't be done. I said, find a way to make it work.
So, and I got to say, I got five kids, and they're all pretty resourceful, and they all, you know, everyone, good. Just got off the phone with my daughter, who's a mother of three, and she's teaching three of my grandchildren in the same way. Find a way to make it work. My son Kyle, he's got two of my grandchildren, and I think he does the same thing with his kids.
And that's the philosophy. But there are people, and I know people. I know a bunch of people. They just say, this isn't going to work.
What am I going to do? So, they look around and they find something, or some one, that they can attach themselves to. Okay, because they're outside, and they want to be inside. They want to know, they want to be in a situation to where, if I follow everything this guy says, or this person says, or this philosophy says, or this whatever says, everything's going to be okay.
I don't have to take responsibility. I'm just going to plug into this, and everything's going to be dandy. You know people like this. You know people like this.
Are you that way? Are you one of those people who go from one thing to another to another to another? And it's confusing. And the noise is, it's confusing noise with wisdom, is what it's doing.
It's making us think that instead of having to think for ourselves, I'm going to do what this guy does, or I'm going to do what this group does, I'm going to be part of this movement. I'm going to be, you know, a no. And they outsource their responsibility. They're blaming the system.
They're waiting to be rescued. Nobody's coming to rescue you. You have to rescue yourself. You know, I mean, really, the umbilical cord is meant for infancy.
You know, for being little babies, it's not meant or it's designed for adulthood. It isn't. Now let me move into another part of this, because the guy kept calling, the guy kept calling, the guy kept calling, the guy kept calling, the guy with record albums. He kept calling our office and calling our office.
And then he, while I was out working, he showed up there one day, and he gave my boss a book. And he said to my boss, he said, this book will change your life. And he said, when you, and he goes, we have this on a record album, but I'm going to give you a copy of the book if you will sign up for a trial. And my boss signed up for a trial.
He later canceled it relatively quickly, but he signed up for a trial. But he loved the book. And I have to tell you, I have to tell you, I've had a bunch of people talk to me about that book over the years. And the book is called, and I want to know if you've read it, I bet you have.
The book is called Think and Grow Rich. And my uncle who taught me, my uncle, my very uncle, a favorite uncle, Uncle George, who taught me, find a way to figure out a way to make it work, told me about this book. And he loved that book. A lot of people loved that book.
And there was, yeah, a lot of people loved that book. It was written by supposedly, by a guy by the name of Napoleon Hill. And here's the story. Here's the story is it was told, okay?
And I heard this story the first time, I hate to mention names, but I'm going to mention names. I have a cousin who became an Amway distributor. And he wanted to recruit people to be an Amway. And part of the deal with his Amway group, by the way, if you went to his presentation, you didn't know it was Amway till the very end.
Oh, we're an international company. We've got offices here, here, here, here, here, here. You've heard it, you've heard it before. You've absolutely heard it before.
And it could be any multi-level marketing. But cousin pops up with this book, and he tells the story about the book. And my uncle is there, Uncle George is there. And so cousin, and by the way, because it is not Uncle George's son, because it is actually Uncle George and my dad's best friend's son, best friend who died in a truck accident in the late 40s.
And they always look at his kids as their nephews. And there is to him. And this one got into Amway. And so he pulls up the book and he tells the story of the book.
He said, this book will make you rich. And all you gotta do is read this book. He said, Napoleon Hill was hired by Andrew Carnegie. And Andrew Carnegie put him on a 20 or 30 year, I don't remember, a very long mission, to go out and interview 500 of the richest people, I don't know what the number is.
Maybe it was 100 of the richest people. I have no idea, but it was a bunch of rich people all around the world. He said them all around the world. And then he was supposed to put this all into a report and publish it so that everybody would have the opportunity to be as rich as Andrew Carnegie.
All right? So that's the book. I've got a copy of the book around your son place. By the way, I'm not going to say go buy the book because you can get the book for free.
You can get the book for free because it's in the public domain now. So if you go to, what is it called, archive.org and type in think and grow rich, it's right there. You can read it right there. You can download it right there for free.
It's right there. And as a matter of fact, a lot of people take that manuscript and they publish it, but they add to it. And I have to do the same thing. And I'll tell you why.
I'm just getting this idea. It's popping into my head right now. But a lot of people say, I've used think and grow rich to build this business model. I'm like, yeah, I would not do that.
Because in the book, it's very good advice to start out with. It's really good, you know, thoughts are things. And if you think about things enough, you know, things will happen for you. You are who you hang out with, essentially, is what it says.
And you get through that thing up until about chapter 11 and then the book turns totally weird. And they talk about sex, sexual transmission or something. I forget what it was that men are empowered because they're always thinking about sex. And that if you harness that power, you can use it to get, you know what the hell's that?
Well, as the story goes, Mr. Hill was very unsuccessful, most of his adult life. As a matter of fact, most of the time he was broke and he tried to write several, you know, he had a company where he would put on seminars and they all failed and he tried to write books and no publisher would pick them up because he was a terrible writer. He was married several times.
I don't know how many times, but one of his wives, this is the story. I don't know what's true, but I think it's true. One of his wives was a good writer. So she took all of this stuff from his seminars and everything and put it all together, encapsulated it all together.
And boom, goes to dynamite. They send this thing off to the publisher and think and grow rich is born. And it becomes a best seller. And you think this is going to make Napoleon Hill rich and it probably did, but he swatted his money and he had nothing at the end.
He died penniless. That wife booted his butt out, you know, not long after. And when the whole thing was all done, he was like done from what I understand. And he died with virtually nothing.
So, you know, what is that? You know, what is that? So he was the umbilical cord that a lot of people or that he is the, where a lot of people are plugging their umbilical cord into. Now, if I were to take that book, I would take that book, think and grow rich by Napoleon Hill with notes by Michael Gross.
By the way, steal this from me. Take the idea. Do a deep dive on the history of the book and him and about all the lawsuits that were brought against him and go through the book and talk about that. Yeah, this is a good idea, but he didn't live by this way because of this and this and this.
It would take some, you know, it would take some, some, you know, panache to get that done. But I think it might be interesting. So I don't know, I've got a lot of things to do. But the bottom line is according to research that I have done on what my youngest son used to call the internet used to say it just like that.
It's like, yeah, why don't you look it up on the internet? According to the research that I have done, the Andrew Carnegie story probably didn't happen. As a matter of fact, I have read articles in the past that say people who knew Andrew Carnegie never knew of his association whatsoever at all. There's no evidence of him ever meeting with Napoleon Hill.
Many of his, of his personal claims are undocumented. Like he's to tell people he advised the likes of Woodrow Wilson and Franklin and Delano Roosevelt. There is absolutely no evidence that any of that is true. Okay.
This book came out, he was involved with a bunch of a string of failed business ventures. And many were accused of being fraudulent from lumber deals with credit, all kinds of stuff. So was he a fraud? Well, two things are true.
His book, Think and Grow Rich, had a massive influence on people. Still does, as a matter of fact, this book that I got here that was sent to me by Manifest Anything, you can imagine, by P.J. Puppy to Newso. In this book that he published, he talks about how great Napoleon Hill is.
So, which kind of like discredited him to me. But anyhow, the backstory was largely fabricated. He just, you know, he just came up with this stuff. But the book did have a massive influence.
But if you're one of those people, okay? If you're one of those people who are wandering around with your umbilical cord in your hand, looking for a place to plug it in, plug it into yourself. Okay, or better yet, grab yourself a pair of metaphysical scissors and snip it off and tie a knot. And then use all of the energy within you to go out and do things.
And to quote my late uncle George, figure out a way to make it work, yammit. I mean, that's it. You know, all of these things, there was good information in that book, but there was a lot of weird ass information in that book. And the record album I got, where I, you know, took the title to this.
There was a lot of good information in that. But the only thing I got out of it was the thing about the umbilical cord. Oh well, we'll see you tomorrow.