Boy Scout Troop 325
Scoutmaster Minute
Being Prepared
August 1, 2006
Larry Polyak, Scoutmaster

Tonight we had gear check for Summer Camp. No doubt a few of you older guys didn't come prepared and thought it was stupid. You figured you'll just throw your gear in your duffle bag on Saturday night and that will be fine. Is there anything you could forget that would make your week miserable? No probably not. We won't be far from civilization and you could probably borrow something important if you need to, or just get by without it. I have heard though of a Scout going snow camping at Bear Paw who forgot his sleeping bag! That was pretty important.

But being prepared is not just making sure you have enough socks and underwear. Being prepared is an important part of being successful in life. I heard an interview with Sebastien Bourdais, the winner of the San Jose Grand Prix which finished this past weekend. This was his 2nd win in a row. He was asked his secret of success. He said simply "We were better prepared than the others.". They surveyed the track, they went over all possible options, the pit crew practiced and trained. They were more prepared.

Mark Cuban, a successful business man and billionaire owner of the Dallas Mavericks, was once asked his secret of success. He looked way back to his childhood, when he sold plastic garbage bags door to door. He had no idea who was going to answer the door. A man, a woman, old, or young. But he prepared himself for anything, He had a speech prepared no matter who answered and had answers ready for any question that would be asked of him, and he sold a lot of garbage bags. He brought the same preparedness to his business later in life and was extremely successful.

Personally, I learned the value of being prepared from a study parter I had in a Physics class in college. We would get together and work through the problems in the current chapter. But for every problem, he would start over and say, "Now what if this were changed", and we'd work through the problem again. "And now what if this were different", and we'd do it again. After 5 or 6 times of working and reworking the problem with different parameters, I was tired and ready to quit. But we were the most prepared. We were ready for whatever the teacher would throw at us on the next test.

So being prepared goes way beyond just making sure you have enough clean socks for the week. Winners are prepared. Successful people are prepared. That's why we teach it in Scouting and that's why it's the Scout Motto.

Thanks for listening.