Category: Fettig, Art

  • Art Fettig: Longevity

    Originally published on August 10, 2008.

    Art Fettig - Motivational Speaker
    Art Fettig

    It is just about twenty years now since I sent out my first safety newsletter. I had come home from speaking to thousands of top safety leaders at the National Safety Congress and over 500 people had asked me for more information about my live presentations and about my safety products. I just figured that a newsletter might be a great way to contact them all at once and on a continuing basis. We would print up the newsletters, staple them together and then put a commemorative stamp on each one together with an address label. It got rather popular and we soon found we were sending out as many as seven thousand copies. I had a nice neighbor lady who helped me with each mailing and it was no small chore. The results were far beyond my expectations and I was kept busy full time as a professional speaker and an author and when we went to e-mail, I began churning the newsletter out each week. Thanks to my friend, Terry Pochert, we have kept this going. I still give an occasional speech and every now and then we get a nice order for our products and most of all, we get messages from many of you about how you saw me speak at some conference and made a special personal commitment to safety and it changed your life. That is really why I continue to take the time to knock out this newsletter.

    Writing Skills
    …this keep my writing skill sharp…

    Then too, this keep my writing skill sharp and I use my talents writing new books. I’ve been sharpening my photographic skills too and we recently published a little book about our little town here in North Carolina, titled Round Hillsborough. Well, we enjoyed some nice success with that book and we are in the final stages of editing another photo book and I have two more in progress.

    In my new book I think I captured some of the joy of what I am currently experiencing as follows…

    “Heading up the hill toward that unique structure that had first caught my eye, I sensed a new spring to my step and in my mind, I was singing

    Zip-a-dee-do-da, Zip-a-dee-ay
    I’m rushin’ toward octageneria!”

    References:

  • Art Fettig’s Newsletter: Better Safety Meetings

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    Art Fettig’s Monday Morning Memo
    Originally distributed on December 28, 2009

    In This Issue
    o Better Safety Meetings
    o Say Something Good
    o Points To Ponder
    o A Little Humor
    o Quote of the Week

    Better Safety Meetings
    Safety - HardhatThe entire audience was hissing the speaker except for one man.  He was applauding the hissing.  Does this sound like your last safety meeting?  Oh, if this could have been your last safety meeting, but no, there is another one staring you right in the face. If there is one thing I have learned in my career, it is that if you want to have great safety meetings then you must first make a commitment to that goal. Next you have to learn how to communicate. If you are mumbling to the group don’t expect positive results. Why not start the year by working on your communication skills?  Many years ago, I wrote a little book modestly titled “World’s Greatest Safety Meeting Idea Book.”  Safety people loved it. Many carried it around with them on the road and thousands kept it on top of their desk for instant reference. Then I wrote another book titled More Great Safety Meeting Ideas.  That book was really popular too and so when safety people complained to me that they didn’t know how to sell their workers or their management their safety ideas I wrote a book on Selling Safety.  We published a number of printings of that book too and then one day I started thinking big and I put those three books together and added yet another one for good measure titled The Quest Continues.  The quest I was referring to was that continuing quest for the golden goose egg, zero injuries.

    We titled the book Winning the Safety Commitment and it is a hefty 400 plus pages. 

    What sort of benefits might you gain from reading this book?  First you will learn how to break down an audience’s resistance to you and your message. I discovered it by doing several thousand talks traveling to all of our 50 United States and all of the Provinces in Canada. I spoke to groups as small as three people on up to over eight thousand. Chapters are bite size so you can read one a day if you prefer. We offer a money back guarantee and not one has ever been returned. If I was a corporate safety leader, I would see that everyone that had the responsibility for safety meetings had one on their desk right now.  It takes four pages just to list the contents of the book. The Union president of an electrical union at one of the top Power Corporations spent ten minutes praising this book before a meeting of several hundred management and labor.

    Why am I making such a strong pitch for the book right now?  Because it just grieves me to think about all of those lost work hours wasted at ineffective safety meetings.  The book is loaded with stories and techniques you will use for the rest of your life.  Once I learned to really communicate my income soared.  Believe me, or if you don’t believe me then buy the book and prove that I’m wrong. 

    I promise, I won’t pitch the book this hard again.  If your organization does not provide you with funds to buy such items then dig into your pocket and invest in your future. Believe me, I paid for my own self-improvement most of the time. I paid my own way to conventions too.  And now as I look back on it I believe I was paid back for such investments a hundred-fold in my career. Nuff sed. We take credit card orders too. 

    Say Something Good
    Somehow, I ended up in a Wal-Mart Christmas Eve just as they were about to close the store. I was sitting there near the door watching the security guard check buyer’s carts and he stopped a young girl because her receipt did not jibe with the items in her cart. Of all things, she had a long steel prying bar that she was evidently endeavoring to slip past the checker. It must have been three feet long and really heavy.  He was very polite with the girl and she finally returned it to where she had picked it up and he let her leave without further action.  Not a minute later he stopped a middle-aged couple. Evidently, they had some electronic item in a box about three-foot square in their cart that had not been paid for.  Obviously, the security man was full of Christmas Spirit because he allowed them too to return the item to its place and to leave the store with the one item they had paid for, unmolested.  Evidently, some shoppers get so full of the Christmas Spirit that they do some mighty foolish things inside a WalMart store.  As I sat there observing for just a second I was tempted to jump up and purchase that prying bar for that young girl but then the thought hit me that she might want to use it for breaking and entering places she should not be going. Then my wife arrived and I jokingly asked her, “Did you pay for everything, Dear?” And she said, “Every last item this time, Darling.” 

    It just shows to go you that on Christmas eve small miracles still happen. May God Bless America and keep our troops for harm this blessed season. 

    Points To Ponder
    The way you get meaning into your life is to devote yourself to loving others. Devote yourself to your community around you, and devote yourself to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning. Mitch Albom

    A Little Humor
    A young lady gets lost in her car in a snowstorm. She remembers her father’s advice, “If you ever get stuck in a snowstorm, wait for a snow plow and follow it.” Soon a snow plow comes by, and she follows it for about 45 minutes.

    Finally, the driver of the truck gets out and asks her what she is doing. She explains the advise her father had given her. The driver says, “Well, I’m done with the parking lot here at the mall, now you can follow me over to the bank.”

    Quote of the Week
    He who chooses the beginning of a road chooses the place it leads to. It is the means that determine the end. Harry Emerson Fosdick

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  • Art Fettig’s Monday Morning Memo – Safety Dedication

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    Updated from original publish date: December 21, 2009

    In This Issue
    o  Safety Dedication
    o Say Something Good
    o Points To Ponder
    o A Little Humor
    o Quote of the Week

    Almost Andy - Art Fettig
    Almost Andy – Art Fettig

    Safety Dedication
    At a big Trade Show recently a fellow came up to me and said, “Hey Art, I understand that you are involved in safety.  I wanted to meet you.”  And POW! I was off and a runnin’ down the track again just like a race horse.  We had a good talk about saving lives and not having to call on new widows and how commitment and dedication and persistence, together with good management and employee involvement, with personal commitment, will result in the kind of safety record one could be proud of.  Safety gets into your blood and your he

    art and your mind and I guess it will never go away. That feeling of “How might I make a positive difference?” just never goes away. In bed that night I asked myself, “How could I take Almost Andy and use him to promote safety? I’m open to ideas.  What might Almost Andy do to make a difference in the field of safety?

    Say Something Good
    Snow, snow, snow. Our little forest looks so different with a snow flooring. Yes, it is beautiful but this is North Carolina and the weather reporter tells us to remain in our homes if at all possible. We have electricity and hot soup in the kettle and all is right with the world. The schools let out at noon yesterday and it seems that all of the doings in town have been canceled. Yes, all America is so beautiful, but it is so white.  May God bless America and keep our troops from harm.

    Points To Ponder
    For the first four years no new enterprise produces profits. Even Motzart didn’t start writing music until he was four. Peter F. Drucker

    A Little Humor
    Did you ever wonder, when you bought a cured ham, what it was cured of.

    Quote of the Week
    You don’t stop laughing because you grow old. You grow old because you stop laughing.  Michael Pritchard

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  • The Almost Learning Process

    Art Fettig’s Monday Morning Memo – December 7, 2009

    In This Issue

    o The Almost Learning Process
    o Say Something Good
    o Points To Ponder
    o A Little Humor
    o Quote of the Week

    The Almost Learning Process

    Think
    Penetrating my Brain … right now my brain is still awaiting penetration.

    I’ve never been a fast learner but lately I have the feeling that my capacity to learn some things has come to a screeching halt. It has. I am making a valiant effort to learn to talk Southern and for this old Yankee it sometimes seems too much. I feel like Elizabeth Dolittle in My Fair Lady. walking around the room saying “The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain.” Again and again and again. Aye do! And just learning Southern isn’t enough because Andy Griffith had his own unique brand of Southern. Still, it is kind of exciting making a determined effort to accomplish a new challenge. Each morning as I approach yet another practice session I find that my mind is blank and it is like I am starting all over again. I’m certain that many of you who have worked in training have trained people with heads so thick that you felt you would never penetrate their thinking system, and yet, when you persist you might soon find them at the head of the class. Well, right now my brain is still awaiting penetration.

    Say Something Good

    I had the honor of speaking at Pearl Harbor for the U.S. Navy some years back and I visited the cemetery and was once again reminded of the horrors of war. We have had and we currently have some mighty fine people in our military. May God bless America and keep our troops out of harms way.

    Points To Ponder

    It is never too late to be what you might have been. George Eliot

    A Little Humor

    Almost Andy Sez… we had a bad accident downtown last week. They had a crew resurfacing the road and one of the onlookers, Sarah May, leaned in too close and fell and she was run over by the steam roller. She’s in Duke Hospital and can have visitors in rooms 203, 204 and 205…

    Quote of the Week

    Children, you must remember something. A man without ambition is dead. A man with ambition but no love is dead. A man with ambition and love for his blessings here on earth is ever so alive. – Pearl Bailey,

  • Art Fettig’s The Dancin’ Rag

    Dance

    About 25 years ago when I was just 65 I took a tap dance class from that same teacher who had taught my daughter, Nancy, many years before. Our classes were at the Senior Center there in Battle Creek, Michigan. There were about 20 women in the class and as I recall I was the only man. I remember it as my weekly hour of total humiliation. I just couldn’t keep up with the ladies. I dropped out of the class, bought a 4’x4′ plywood board and began dancing a simple shuffle step I came up with. Greg Brayton and I recorded a song we called The Dancin’ Rag. It started out slow and got faster and faster. And then I went back and danced on my board at Greg’s recording studio and we taped it. The Dancin’ Rag is attached.

    At speeches I would close my talk with a story about the fact that no one is too old to learn new skills and I would illustrate my point by closing my presentation with my dance.You might find me dancing for the United States Air Force on Youtube.com Art Fettig.

    Well, the other day I was looking at some DVD’s we had recently converted from a big box of VHS’s I’d brought with me twenty years ago in my move here to Hillsborough from Battle Creek.

    In that box I found a video tape of a presentation I made for Alabama Power Company years ago and I closed that presentation doing my first ever Dancin’ Rag in public.

    Well that stirred me up. Maybe it is the months of isolation most of us have endured lately. Somehow I went straight to Amazon.com and typed in Men’s tap shoes, size 13. To my amazement up popped a wide selection of offers. Reasonable offers and they all claimed to have size 13. I’d been searching for years for such shoes. My wife reluctantly helped me order the shoes online and they arrived today, sure enough, black lightweight tap shoes and they fit me perfectly. I found the song on our Mixed Bag CD. I played it and some good old memories came back to me. I put my new shoes on. I sat in my chair at my computer shuffling my tired old feet. A few toes felt a little bit numb. There is a little arthritis in the ankle joints. Both knees were replaced over twenty years ago and they had 12 year guarantees. Then there is my lower and upper back and my neck. You know, the usual 90 year old stuff. The worn out parts. Still, there is that spark still burning in my imagination, still burning bright. I dug out that 4’x4′ practice board, and there is my big mirror on the wall and if you happen to drive by our home in the woods and hear a rag song blasting out from my music room upstairs I might just be standing in front of the mirror on that practice board dancing the whole one minute and fifty-six seconds of our song The Dancin’ Rag. You can hear it right now by clicking on The Dancing Rag MP3 below. Good luck.