Many people never really understand the true meaning of the word “persistence.”

When you continually work towards something that may seem like an insurmountable or unattainable task but never give up and continue trying until you accomplish your goal. That is my definition of persistence. I had a good reminder of this week of why being persistent truly pays off, and why most people don’t have the stomach or patience to endure being persistent.

There was a piece of new business that I had been working on for almost two years that, at times, I thought was very close and, at other times, the thought crossed my mind to throw in the towel and give up. For almost two years, I had made several trips across the country to meet with some very nice people who own and run the business, but everything from long term contracts with current vendors, to Covid, state mandated closures, business booms and now inventory shortages had kept this business unobtainable.

While being persistent, I also exercised patience in my dealings and communications. The owners would call or give me small projects that probably really weren’t worth a lot of my time in the grand scheme of things, but I warmly accepted each project knowing that it would hopefully get me one step closer to my end goal. Sometimes, the projects were frustrating, and others were at times easy projects. But what I failed to realize until this week was that each project was proving to them my ability to perform and execute in a very flawless manner.

And then it happened. All at once, when I took them a very well-thought-out plan that showed a tremendous value and fulfilled a need that I had observed over the last two years, it all came together and I won the business. No flashy presentation, no great speech, no discounted rates or concessions – just being that consistent vendor that I had proven to be with a value proposition of what I could bring to the table made it all happen.  No bells or whistles, no frills, just a great business model that would prove to make them more successful than they are without me is what was communicated.

It felt great. It was also a little scary because I see how much work is now required, but for me, that is no problem. The business came by two years of grit and determination and a mindset of persistence – with a never-give-up attitude.

The next time life throws a wrench in your plans (or a series of wrenches – like the last two years in this case) all you need to do is remember one word.: persistence.

After an unprecedented week of tropical storms flooding wet weather across the country – which I’ve been glued to the Weather Channel and watched pretty much religiously all week – I’m reminded of the current economic client. There are ups, and there are downs. Just like in business and in life. It’s really easy to let yourself get a cloudy perspective and to let one negative thing turn you around and give you a negative outlook on life. But as I watched the weather across the country this week, the one thing that I reminded myself of was that it’s always sunny somewhere. The sun is always shining on people who have positive attitudes.

Now, this is not a post about staying positive. But it’s a reminder to not let yourself be clouded by one situation or instance. Don’t let your mind go into a negative place if a string of bad things happens to you. It’s not that you have bad luck or that you aren’t a good person, you simply have to keep finding where the sun is. The sun is always shining somewhere, and the more you keep yourself in a sunny mindset, the more you keep yourself from being cloudy. And when you keep yourself from being cloudy, you have a great perspective on both your life and your business.

As it seems we’re always so busy that we never find time to get everything done, or so busy that we can’t find enough time to do the things we want to do, I’ve recently reminded myself how important it is to find time to help those even if you know there is nothing they are going to do right now to help you in return.

I came across a quote the other day, not by anybody famous, but that I had written down in a notebook when I was 24 years old. It said, “Never forget how important you can make somebody feel by going out of your way to help them if they deserve it.” Recently, I’ve started putting that into practice with very little things. Not all business-related, but helping people in various aspects of their lives. From the smallest thing like giving a small gift, or paying somebody more attention than you typically would, to very large efforts like trying to find friends or former employees a job to help them out. By doing this, it has given me a very renewed sense of appreciation for how many people helped me along the way. How many people helped me when I was just getting started and nobody was lining up to help me. How important it was to me the first time I got a big break, and there were people standing around willing to help me.

The moral of the story is to take time when things come at you completely out of nowhere to make a difference by being extra special to somebody who needs your time more than you do at the moment.

Sometimes, I am baffled at what an instant response or a decisive action can do in a situation.

Having never been a person who likes to procrastinate and thrives on making quick decisions, it has seemed to pay off in my favor more times than it has failed me. With decisions in business and life, the longer I wait around on something to happen or scour my mind back and forth on a matter, the outcome generally doesn’t happen the way I want it to. Making fast decisions and never looking back has cost me some things in the past but has paid dividends many times over because of my nature.

To me, the faster you can make a decision means the sooner that you can get something off your plate and off your mind and move on to something else. I think this is why my capacity for tasks, projects, virtually anything has always been great because I just cannot stand to sit still. That is not in everyone’s nature to want to take risks and be willing to not take a lot of time to methodically think through every situation, but sometimes you just need to trust your instincts and go in the direction you originally think is the right way to go.

Just last week, I was served up an opportunity for growth. A way to grow my business, which meant making a split decision to hop on a plane and fly across the country with nothing more than a day’s notice. It was a prime example of thinking fast and not hesitating. The opportunity seemed right, made sense, and would only cost me a little bit of time and a few thousand miles. So, as another example, I made a split-second decision and made a commitment to go and throw caution to the wind. I traveled to a state that I had only been to once before to meet someone I had only had one phone conversation, with but was willing to trust the instinct of acting fast and trying to capitalize.

As I write this note, I am now flying back home from across the country and a very successful trip is coming back with me. If I had waited a couple of weeks to do a little more research on the project, you never know what might have or have not happened. All I know is that you strike when the iron is hot and be as aggressive as you can to make things happen.

This isn’t an “I told everybody so” type of note – rather, a motivator for whoever may read it to quit waiting on things to happen. Go out and make them happen. If you see something that you want or have a goal you want to conquer – go do it. It is all up to you, and things can happen as fast or as slow as you want them to.

I never was a morning person until I started working. Hunting, fishing, all of the activities I enjoy… a lot of them require getting up before the sun comes up, in the pre-dawn hours. But not until I started my career did I have a new appreciation for getting myself up and going early every day.

A few years ago, through the ups and downs of career, life, and all of the issues you run into and out of on a daily basis, I gained a new mindset. Every day is like a blank page. It’s a way to get to start over. You can start your day as positive as you want to be, as enthusiastic as you want to be, no matter what happened to you the day before. Regardless of what issues you went to bed thinking about, as you get started with the sun coming up and you get your mind ready to tackle the day, you have to look at it like every day is a blank page. And at the end of that day, what you do is on that page.

I’ve adopted that mindset, and it’s been very beneficial for me. As I start out each and every new day, I just can’t help but love the chance of getting to write another day in history with something meaningful that I have had an impact on in this world.

When you grow up around cars and racing cars, you learn what it means to “redline” an engine. The tachometer when running wide open as far as you can push the engine will “redline.” And if you hold there too long or are not careful, you will blow the engine. Blowing an engine means you are instantly out of the race, and maybe more importantly, will either spend a lot of time or a lot of money getting the engine replaced. When you are either racing or pushing a car as much as you can, you always have to be mindful that if you push too hard, you are likely to blow up. And that means you have to start over.

Redlining is kind of the same approach that I have adopted in life and in work. To take advantage of every minute and every opportunity, you must push yourself and others as far as they can go. You must get everything out of yourself and those around you that you can without creating a catastrophic event (like redlining an engine) such as blowing an engine. You also have to realize that not everyone wants to run wide open all the time. Some people enjoy breaks and times of lower RPM performance. But still, you must find a way to energize them so that they embrace the constraints of always racing – whether in business or in life.

Just like any racecar driver, I have blown a lot of engines in my career. Only the engines that you blow in business cannot be replaced with 8 cylinders. They come with 2 eyes, 2 ears, 1 mouth, 10 fingers, etc. The engines I have blown have all been in the form of people. Either people that I pushed too far or expected too much out of that ended up not surviving for whatever reasons can all be traced back to “redlining.” There is no common trait among people that they love to run wide open all the time. True, some people do enjoy this way of life and usually fit in very well around me – but it isn’t for everyone. And I think, overall, that is a very good thing.

Sometimes, like now, I just like to sit here and think about a world that would exist with no redlines. How great it would be if everyone wanted to run as fast as me or even faster. What a sense of achievement I would have to watch an entire organization that never needed a word of motivation – they just wanted to go. Maybe that is what my form of Valhalla would be. Or maybe it is just a process of building everyone into my way of thinking.

Opportunities come in all kinds of different ways in life.

The ones that have the biggest meanings in our lives generally come in relationships. Husbands and wives, parents and children, friends and people we collect throughout our journeys through our time on earth are generally what occupy the most opportunities to fulfill our lives with enjoyment. Every person you meet, every relationship you decide to invest in is nothing more than an opportunity to live a richer and fuller life by spending time with people you choose to spend time with. These are also the opportunities that you take chances on in people. You may take time to get to know someone over the years, but then over time you drift apart and become nothing more than a “like” on a Facebook post or a text message on a birthday, and a “hey, how are you” when you see them at the grocery store. These personal opportunities also can bring a great amount of sadness and grief as you lose people in your life with things like death and illness, leaving you to reflect on the time you spent with them as your most prized asset.

People and relationships are the most meaningful opportunities that you will ever find in your life, and you might as well try all of them while you are still walking on earth.

Other opportunities come in the form of more tangible things like where you work, where you live, and the kind of activities you spend your time on. These are all opportunities to better yourself either for happiness or additional fulfillment in life. Some people crave money and success and will sacrifice time and relationships to achieve their goals. Others will sacrifice money and tangible things to spend more time doing what they enjoy. Regardless of which column you fall into, you are still taking advantage of unique opportunities and using your own motivations for how you live your life.

As I walk through every day of my life, it is filled with choices. How to create a balance of what is close and personal to me along with what motivates me. While some days are more fulling in either column than others at the spry young age of 41, I think my compass is pretty well dialed in on a direction I want to go and what sacrifices it requires to get there. It’s all a balance. Something I have written about for a long time, but knowing where you want to go and what it is going to take to get there when opportunities come at you requires a lot of discipline.

It is also very clear sometimes to see the confusion some people have over which opportunities drive their motivation. The ones most obvious are ones that are derived from anger. Whether it’s news, politics, opinions – even personal likes and dislikes, it is really starting to amaze me to see the lengths people will go to jump at an opportunity that really will never amount to anything for them. People are so quick to see an opportunity in our current world with no real benefit for them in the end and risk so much to accomplish so little.

There is no moral for this story, only an observation that if you are taking opportunities that don’t equate to personal relationships that you can keep the rest of your life or opportunities that allow you to enjoy your time on earth. You might want to rethink your motivations. Over the years, I have found myself doing this quite a bit, and it has helped to guide me on the path I am headed down.

Don’t ever be scared to try new things.

Last night, while packing my bag for a quick business trip, I had about a 10-second brain lapse where I forgot where I was going the next day. It is an important thing for me to remember because, depending on who I am going to see, I always try to dress the part.

For brand new clients or prospects, I tend to dress very conservatively with not a lot of flash. Simple colors, simple patterns, absolutely nothing that is over the top. But, for people I know and may have worked with for a very long time, sometimes my appearance may take a walk on the wild side.

This isn’t a fashion blog, but to make a point of reference I was packing somewhat conservatively because part of my upcoming trip was to meet someone that I have never met before with a proposition to win all of their business, not just the part we had been doing. After my brain refocused, I started going through my head with what I was going to say in the meeting, things to remember as key points about their business, and the whole nine yards of what you do to prepare for a new business meeting. After playing these scenarios through, while packing a change of shirts and socks, it was time to zip my bag up with the last thing to go in – it’s always my bathroom kit. While placing the kit in my bag, I thought back to what it used to be like to be “scared” or timid before meetings like this one. Years ago, there were a lot fewer of them and each one seemed to bring on a little more anxiety.

That gave me a great reminder – something my dad use to always say before a big meeting. “Don’t be scared. It isn’t like they are going to eat you if you mess up.” Not being scared to meet new people and try new things is what fuels business growth. No, even I don’t get but about half of the new opportunities I get in front of, so you will have to accept a decent amount of failure in these endeavors. But never, ever be scared of them. It is what makes life fun and keeps things interesting.

To look at a calendar from a year ago to today is like being on a different planet. This day last year was ruled by uncertainty, fear, and feeling like there was nothing you could do about anything. Which is a complete 180 from where we sit today with everything rocking and rolling at a record pace. There is no doubt the difference between what was happening a year ago and what is happening today definitely makes you thankful for everything in your life.

It is also amazing all that you can handle if you really make yourself focus. From buying and selling things, working on new and big deals, and building a level of talented people so interested in success that they become unstoppable is what my focus has been and has me thriving. Even when I take a moment (or a week) to chill out on spring break with my family, I still find my mind working at warp speed. And it’s not working at warp speed on problems, but working on how things can be better and what some of the next moves are going to be.

You always need to take time to take a break. Something I really didn’t believe in and had a hard time doing throughout most of my career but have come to believe in the importance of taking time to not only take a break for myself, but to give others a break from me. That may sound a little like a farce but not just giving myself space but giving other people space has really made a difference in the speed and ability that people want to achieve.

Taking a minute to chill also gives me time to just be thankful. Again, something that I used to have a hard time doing because I was always looking for more. Now, even as more still becomes more… it is fun to take a moment and take it all in.

This is a quote that I heard this week while traveling to see clients. It made me stop and put some things into perspective, as I had never heard this or its meaning before and thought it was a noble enough piece worth sharing.  

A lot of times people will ask ,“are you doing well?” And usually, the answer – even when it isn’t necessarily the truth – is that you are well. But people always have struggles that others never know about, and probably to be truthful, do not care about. There are things causing fear, creating faults, and causing people to not live by a guiding set of principles that often are never visible to the outside world. But the simple question of “are you doing well” is simply a way to say hello to someone and at least give off the inclination that you care about them.

In this context, and the way it was explained to me, “doing well” has an entirely different approach from the normal salutation. You are doing well because you have spent your time and effort trying to do good. Doing good can be difficult sometimes especially when you are doing good for other people and some of the people perceive that nothing you do is good and can find a lot of fault with you. To do good, you have to have your heart and your mind in the right place. You have to understand and accept what you are doing and why, and be at peace with it. Without these two in tandem, the level of good that you are doing will be insurmountable.

To truly be “doing well,” in my mind, is a place where you have conquered your fears, accepted your faults, believe in yourself and those around you, and have lived by principles that caused you to do good. And not just do good for yourself, but to do good for other people. Once you have done good for others, done a good job at truly knowing and accepting who you are, then you can truly be “doing well.”