Event + Response = Outcome

Whether success or failure, wealth or poverty, health or illness, intimacy or estrangement, joy or frustration, every outcome you experience in life is the result of how you have responded to an earlier event or events in your life.

The following incident happened at a Lexus dealership in Southern California. When the Gulf War broke out, people stopped coming in to buy Lexus's. They knew that if they didn't change their response to the event of nobody coming into the showroom, they were going to slowly go out of
business. Their normal response would have been to continue placing ads in the newspaper and on the radio, then wait for people to come into the dealership. But that wasn't working.

The outcome they were getting was a steady decrease in sales. So they tried a number of new things. The one that worked was driving a fleet of new cars out to where the rich people were-the country clubs, marinas, polo grounds, parties in Beverly Hills and Westlake Village-and then inviting them to take a spin in a new Lexus.

Now think about this ...have you ever test-driven a new car and then got back into your old car? Remember that feeling of dissatisfaction you felt as you compared your old car to the new car you had just driven? Your old car was fine up until then. But suddenly you knew there was something better-and you wanted it. The same thing happened with these folks. After test-driving the new car, a high percentage of the people bought or leased a new Lexus.

The dealership had changed their response to an unexpected event-the war-until they got the outcome they wanted of increased sales. They actually ended up selling more cars per week than before the war broke out.

Everything you experience in life both internally and externally is the result of how you have responded to a previous event.