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hard work

“History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.” – Winston Churchill

Ah… good old Winnie. You’ve gotta love him. That’s one of my all-time favorite quotes and largely because it demonstrates how you need to consider both the past and the present when planning for the future. What does that have to do with this week’s links? Well, Big thinker, read on…

Linda Bustos kicks things off by taking us back to the Summer… er, I mean, the Internet of ‘69. It seems we have come so far. But Mike Moran argues we’re still in the early days of internet marketing. And I agree. We’ll look back at this period some day as the “cave painting” period of online marketing. Sure, there are some great converting sites, but the overall experience online has a long way to go before it consistently meets customer expectations. Sure, as we saw earlier this week, offline customer service can suck, too. But, customers don’t stick around for the companies that don’t take care of them offline or online.

The best companies understand this and are changing to address customers’ expectations. Heck, the whole Bing marketing campaign assumes customers hate search engine results and positions itself as a better alternative. For that matter, all the search engines are changing, so maybe there’s something to Bing’s push.

What’s ironic is that these efforts show the road to improvement relies on setting the right goals, putting in the time, fixing what needs to be fixed. Yes, it’s definitely more important in the long run to work smarter. But, sometimes it’s equally important to be willing to work harder.



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persistence means showing upLet me introduce you to my high school principal, Fr. Edwin. Fr. Ed, really. He is a tough, scrappy little guy. 5-foot-nine. Maybe 160 pounds soaking wet. Running a Catholic school in what was once the toughest part of Newark, NJ. It’s still a part of town, sadly, where far too many young people die from violence. But Newark is making a comeback. Slowly. But surely. Crime rates have fallen. And – of all things – hockey has a home there now.

Why?

Because of people like Fr. Ed and the work he does. He – and others like him in the city – work damned hard, every day, to improve the lives of those around them.

His secret?

Show up.

Every day.

We never had snow days in high school. Never. Not once. Why? Because showing up matters.

Woody Allen is credited with the joke, “90% of life is just showing up.” But Fr. Ed was who told me first. And showed me. Every day. So much of life is just showing up.

Last week, we talked about how you can get lucky. And, really, so much of it is just putting in the work.

That doesn’t guarantee success – that’s where the other 10% comes in. But success mostly comes from putting in the time, day after day after day. You want to find smart ways to do it a la Tim Ferriss. But a willingness to work hard and smart will get you where you want to go. Want another example? Look at how Jon Stewart runs the Daily Show.

The key is, it doesn’t matter whether your goal is to grow your business, make people laugh or shape the lives of others, showing up matters.

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