Boggs Encourages Chamber Merchants to “Keep On Moving” in Difficult Times

Dilshanie Perera

Inspirational speaker and former talk show host Bill Boggs shared insights about strategies for success with Princeton Regional Chamber of Commerce members during their membership luncheon last Thursday.

Listening to radio shows as a child whetted the four-time Emmy Award winner’s appetite for interviewing others, and during his talk shows he found that “in many cases I wasn’t just interviewing my guests, I was learning from them.”

Mr. Boggs assembled the nuggets of wisdom gleaned from the likes of Frank Sinatra, Evander Holyfield, Anna Quindlen, Joe Torre, Donald Trump, Renée Zellweger, Jim Cramer, and others into a book, Got What it Takes? Successful People Reveal How They Made it to the Top.

One section of the book deals with adversity, the topic Mr. Boggs focused on during his talk.

“During difficult times, people have a tendency to become overly self-centered,” Mr. Boggs said, telling Chamber members that it is important to “just keep on moving.”

Channelling Jules Stein, the founder of MCA, Inc., Mr. Boggs wondered whether the economic downturn could be viewed through a different lens, saying that “in difficult times, the astute discern the opportunity.”

Mr. Boggs acknowledged in a telephone interview that the kind of success he spoke about at the luncheon was “career success, or making an impact in your chosen field and rising to the top of that field,” but that his personal definition of success involves “living a passionate life.”

“If you’re following the course of your dreams, and listening to your true self, that is a successful life as far as I’m concerned.”

Mr. Boggs noted that “we have to be willing to grow and change” given our circumstances, and that “attitude is a matter of choice.”

During the course of the talk, he mentioned that the celebrities and leaders he has interviewed all shared a few traits in common. Distilling these down to six modes of behavior that spur success, Mr. Boggs said that being both unafraid and tenacious are key attributes.

A sense of optimism and gratitude was fairly universal among the people he interviewed, as was a reference to hard work.

“The ability to focus and be in the moment” was another shared characteristic, he said.

“I’m one of those lucky people who made his childhood dream come true,” Mr. Boggs said, acknowledging that “it wasn’t a linear thing. The path in the beginning was somewhat circuitous.”

During the interview, Mr. Boggs disclosed that his entry into the field of show business involved managing a comedy team of two co-workers. “None of us liked our corporate jobs,” he explained, recalling “trudging up to work with my briefcase.”

One day, as he was walking down the hall, he observed his colleagues acting out a comic sketch for another co-worker, and “I had a revelation.”

“Six months later, they were on the Merv Griffin show,” he said, adding that “once I opened that door, I was really on the right track.”

“I always tell people that they are bound and obligated to act on a moment of inspiration,” he said.

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