I’LL DO IT!

Our stories always start way before our actual story does, with that of our ancestors. And the same goes for me. The farthest I can go back is to my grandparents. And we can all start thereby learning from our ancestors' stories: The things they've done and how that affects us and the roads we take in our lives.

All my four grandparents came from somewhere in Eastern Europe between Romania, Austro-Hungary, and Czechoslovakia. And I'd like to speak about two of them because, like most Jewish families at the time, they were most definitely affected by World War Two.

My grandparents, all four of them, are Holocaust survivors. All of them lost their parents. And except for one, all of them lost brothers and sisters. Some of my grandparents came from low-income families, some from wealthy families, but once the worst started, they were all the same—just Jews.

My grandfather Arie - which means "Lion" - managed to survive Auschwitz for more than two years. He then walked the "Death Walk" to Mauthausen in the winter of 1944-1945 and survived that. And I'm very thankful he and the others shared his story with me. I once asked him when I was young, "How did you make it." And he said, "It was easy":

Anytime the Nazis asked for volunteers for anything, no matter how cold it was, how hungry he was, how long the day was - and this is Auschwitz - he said, "Take me." Anytime they asked, he raised his hand.

By always volunteering, the Nazis and their helpers knew they could trust him. They knew they could use him, obviously, but it was worthwhile for them to "take care of him." (Suppose that can even be said about a Jewish teenager in Auschwitz at the time).

Yet, because of that, he survived since he got to get a bit more food or soup. So, by being valuable, he just had more to eat. And the same goes for the Death March. Can you imagine walking 500km in winter? After more than two years in Auschwitz, without proper shoes or a coat? With the Nazis shooting anyone too slow?

"How did you do that"? I asked again. "I just walked," he said - Those who argued, stopped, or overthought died.

?As Martin Luther King, Jr. said,

"You don't have to see the whole staircase; just take the first step."

Simultaneously, and only a few hundred meters away from him, and without them knowing about the other between the thousands of suffering Jews, was my grandmother from the other side, Miriam, in the sister camp Birkenau. She also survived.

How? She worked in one of the factories there, and one of her jobs was cleaning the offices of some Nazi officer. And she said that he saved her life. She didn't get into detail, so we're unsure how that happened and exactly what she did, but she said he trusted her. She was beautiful but also a very hard-working girl. And I guess she cleaned well. Suppose that's all she did. Any time that the Nazis rounded people up to send them to the gas chambers or do more challenging work, he would tell her, "You have to clean now; you stay inside. You don't go outside". Again, she survived by being valuable and trusted.

And what did I learn from both of them? First, our suffering, trouble, and issues are nothing compared to those they have gone through.

Though I went through so much, the most significant lecture I took from that extraordinary generation is to do it and think about it later.

?SAY, "I'LL DO IT!" WITHOUT OVERTHINKING.

?A bit after I started my independent consulting business, I got a phone call from Vincenz, the area manager responsible for Israel for BMW.

He said, "Hey Guy, I know you teach business negotiation, I know you speak Hebrew, and I know you love our cars. Do you think you can conduct sales training for BMW in Israel"?

This was the most important "I'll do it" I've ever said.

Did I ever conduct sales training before? No. Did I learn everything I could to make it the best I could by the time it started? Absolutely!

It started a snowball of other projects with many companies that led me to ultimately deal with strategy, communication, and negotiation, mainly for the premium and luxury segment.

Many more "I'll do it" followed after that: I said it when asked to write a security training concept for the Munich Oktoberfest. I said I would create an innovation program for Bavarian and Israeli students. I said I'd do it to build a training concept for luxury Swiss watches, I'll turn over a 35-year-old family business, and I've said "I'll many "more times.

I also plan to continue saying it in my business and private life for as long as possible. What about you?

This is the first chapter of my short book, "I'll do it!"