It’s fascinating how Earl Nightingale got started in the motivation business in the first place. After his success as a radio serial hero, “Sky King,” on CBS decades ago, Earl invested in a Franklin Life Insurance Agency. Each week he energized the sales team with a brief pep session. This drumbeat of enthusiasm and wisdom drove the sales team’s output. When Earl decided to take a vacation, the agency’s manager figured it would knock the wind out of the sales’ sails. So Earl recorded his messages on tape. Sales soared! And the tapes launched a whole new art form — the recorded motivational message.

I owe a lot to Earl Nightingale. When I was beginning in sales, Earl was one of my life-shaping experiences. No one explained success more clearly or simply. What makes him stand outfi He’s so relevant!

There’s a classic tale he tells titled “Acres of Diamonds.” Here’s the gist: Years ago, a farmer contracted the “diamond bug.” He sold his farm to grubstake himself and hunt for diamonds. The person who bought his farm spied an unusual rock in a creek on the back 40. He put the stone on his fireplace mantel, as an interesting curiosity. A visitor pegged the rock as a huge diamond in the rough. The first farmer died penniless, having sold his old farm for nearly nothing. That old farm was loaded with diamonds in the rough that the first farmer never recognized. Nightingale’s point: Diamonds in the rough are easy to miss. They can be people. They can be ideas.

Some of the other jewels from the Nightingale treasure chest:

“Successful people are not without problems; they are simply people who have learned to solve their problems.” Only 8 percent of what we fret about are legitimate worries, Nightingale used to say. Tote up the enormous waste of energy tearing our hair out about what we can’t possibly change or fix! On the other hand, if you instead use that worry time to tackle some very basic things, you can get seismic results.

Jerry Colangelo and Dick Klein did. When they revamped the Chicago Bulls in the 1960s, they changed how the team practiced. “One of the things that kind of surprised me when I entered the (NBA),” Colangelo wrote in “How You Play the Game,” (AMACOM, 1999) “was the lackluster quality of practicing and training. … Practices were essentially a series of scrimmages.”

Howard Schultz followed Nightingale’s line of thinking, too. In “Pour Your Heart into It” (Hyperion Press, 1999), Schultz gives a drip-by-drip account of how he and his team made Starbucks one of the great business success stories of our time. Looking back, what was one of the biggest debates in Starbucks’ historyfi Whether to offer nonfat milk in lattes and cappuccinos! Visit an espresso bar in Milano or Roma, and you’ll learn fast that native Italians can’t imagine these coffee treats with nonfat milk. From a purist standpoint, offering these options “was tantamount to treason,” Schultz says. But it was treason with a reason. “In subsequent years, we have moved farther and farther from our initial dogmatic stance.” Whyfi Americans wanted nonfat milk in their coffee. Give tradition its due or deliver what customers want. You pick the goal.

For those interested in hearing more of Nightingale’s timeless wisdom, Diana Nightingale, owner of Keys Publishing, and widow of Earl Nightingale, reissued the classic Nightingale motivational series in three CD programs. “Lead the Field,” “The Strangest Secret” and “Creative Thinking” are available for purchase online at www.nightingaleproducts.com.

If you think you didn’t get value received from “Lead the Field,” write to me and I guarantee I’ll personally respond.

Mackay’s Moral: Diamonds are nearly everywhere, but they can only shine when you polish the crystal.

This story appeared in The Daily Herald on page E6.