Everything Under a Dollar

He was what some people might call a nut job and others brilliant. But nobody can deny John Templeton's boldness. It's 1939. War has just broken out in Europe, and America has spent a decade in the Great Depression. As moments to take a “big swing” go, most people saw this one somewhere between terrible and "does your mother know about this?"

A young John Templeton saw it differently. He grew up in Winchester, Tennessee, a mere 75 miles from where I sit as I write this. At 26, he borrows $10,000 from his former boss and calls his broker with an unusual order: buy some of every stock selling for under a dollar. The broker picks himself off the floor and comes back having skipped the bankrupt companies. Templeton tells him he wants those too. I can only imagine the silence on that phone call. I can also imagine the broker checking to see whether his commission would clear.

He ended up with shares in 104 companies, including 34 in bankruptcy. Only four turned out to be worthless, which is a better hit rate than most of us have picking the fast line at the grocery store. About four years later, he sold the lot for more than $40,000. After paying back the loan, that's a gain of more than half a million in today's money. Now, please don't take out a loan and buy penny stocks. Your spouse and your financial advisor would both want a word with me. But here's the point. Everybody was looking at the same companies. Most people saw the end of the world. Templeton saw opportunity right in front of him, in the very place everyone else had given up on.

I see that in our industry right now. Plenty of people will tell you business is too hard. Meanwhile, many loan officers are winning big in the same market, under the same headlines. And it's not just mortgage and real estate. In every line of work, someone is complaining about the conditions while someone else is quietly building something in them.

I see people all over who spend years hunting for the perfect opportunity instead of cultivating the one right in front of them. They've got the podcasts, the LinkedIn tabs, and a very detailed five-year plan that starts next year. None of us outgrow that temptation. The perfect job, the perfect market, the perfect people and the perfect moment always seem to be somewhere else.

There's a much older story about this. In Genesis, a severe famine hits the land where Isaac is living. He looks like he's headed for Egypt, the obvious move, since that's where people went when the rain stopped. Egypt has always had great marketing, but once you're there.... well..... a different story altogether. Then God interrupts him:

"Do not go down to Egypt, but do as I tell you. Live here as a foreigner in this land, and I will be with you and bless you." (Genesis 26:2-3, NLT)

So Isaac stays put. And in the middle of a famine, in land that doesn't look like much of an opportunity, he plants. I doubt the neighbors were impressed. Nobody in Gerar had "start farming during the famine" on their vision board.

Isaac's job was to stay and plant. The harvest came from God. That should take some weight off your shoulders this morning. And yes, sometimes God does move us. But a lot of people aren't waiting on a call from God. They are just looking at the A-side of someone else's record and don't hear the garbage on the B-side. Seeing the green grass, not the rocky soil and weeds. Usually it's greener because somebody over there has been watering it.

It's time to stop looking for Egypt and start the harvest with the soil God gave us. That might be the job you have, the town you're in, the team around you, or the family at your table.

You don't need a better field. You've got soil, you've got seed, and you serve a God who has no trouble producing a harvest in a famine. Someday you may look back on this stretch as the season when everything started to grow. So go get your hands dirty. Egypt will still be there. You've got planting to do.