What is Holding you back?

What is holding you back? Challenging times offer opportunities for success. Can you imagine how difficult it was living in Tucson without air conditioning (or a swamp cooler) a hundred years ago? Dusty streets, boarded up buildings and oppressive summer heat faced the citizens of our community in the early nineteen hundreds. Tucson was mainly known as a place where tuberculosis sufferers would come for the dry heat.
But, amidst this despair there were many that saw opportunity in spite of the circumstances. You may not know about John Murphy, but you probably have heard of his partner Josias Joesler. They built the first shopping center in Tucson, Broadway Village, at Broadway and Country Club. Joesler was known for his eclectic Spanish colonial revival style and John Murphy was his patron. Many of the homes near the U of A built in the twenties and later homes in the foothills are Joesler designed homes. What I didn’t know was how John Murphy made his money. I knew that he owned most of the land in the foothills, but I didn’t know that he got that land by paying U of A students to homestead land in the foothills and then buying them out later. I am not sure about the legality of what he did, but it certainly was entrepreneurial. Charlie O’Dowd told me about his grandfather that owned the first title insurance company in Tucson back in the twenties. Folks didn’t see the value of title insurance so he went to the legislature and petitioned to make title insurance a requirement on selling property. This of course propelled his company forward and 40 years later he sold the company for 4.4 million dollars. An African Gazelle can leap 10 feet vertically and travel 30 feet horizontally but will not go over a 3 foot wall in a zoo because they can’t see where their feet will land. Fear keeps us from leaping over the wall to freedom. Like our early pioneers we have an opportunity to move forward with new ideas and innovation. Or we can wait for the zoo keeper to bring us our next meal.