Living in The Lion Zone Newsletter June 2020 edition
The creators of the 1983 Right Guard TV Ad campaign understood the role hard work played in the lives of ordinary men and women. In one of these commercials, it featured men in various work settings all of which required a lot of hard work and the accompanying perspiration that went with it. The musical jingle included the tag line “You work hard so use Right Guard”.
We’ve all heard the old saying “Its 10 percent inspiration and 90 percent perspiration”.
What do you think? If we were to look at all the TV, magazine and internet ads we are led to believe that all we have to do is follow 7 secrets, take these pills, have this surgery or buy this business course and in a matter of a day’s maybe a few weeks you too will be on the back page of Parade Magazine showing of your brand new bikini body.
Can I tell you a secret? This is all bunk. Yep bunk. No one gets a bikini body by ingesting pills and continually living as you’ve always lived. No one will be a millionaire real-estate mogul just by purchasing and listening to a $200 dollar course. You won’t look like Mr. Olympian by ingesting powders and potions and you certainly won’t see your business double its profits just by attending a one day class or reading a book.
Why? Because all these ads make it look as if you can just flick a switch, pop a pill, take a course, read a book or do a few exercises and immediately you will be a different person or your business will double its sales. What these ads leave out is all the hard work that went into achieving these changes.
Example: Possibly you’ve run into an old friend who looks fabulous and has lost an immense amount of weight. She now has the coveted bikini body you see in Parade magazine or perhaps He has the Mr. Olympia body you see in the fitness ads. You’re so inspired by your friend, you decide to set out and loose weight yourself. Well what happens? You know what happens. In 80 percent of all cases the inspiration dies soon after the perspiration begins.
You see your friend got their new body through a two year daily regime of exercise and counting calories. Woops you didn’t know that when you started out. You probably heard this from her lips later when you called to ask how she did it. Oh it was nothing they say, but when pressed they reveal that they made major changes to how they lived their life. She made it a number one priority to exercise five days a week and to stop eating all the stuff you aren’t supposed to eat. And yes it took her two years.
Another example is when it comes to following through on building a business you feel inspired to start. Maybe you bought a business growth strategy course, attended an online course on social media marketing or maybe you’ve dreamed of owning your own business for years. Regardless of the why, soon you find after several months of hard work you just don’t have what it takes and the business goes down the tubes. Hence the reason why 80 percent of all new businesses fail.
What these get rich quick gurus don’t tell you is it takes a lot of hard work over a long period of time and lots of assistance by professionals and advisors before you begin to see the fruit of your labor. They don’t tell you that many people who are successful today lived on the ragged edge for a number of years before they had amassed enough assets to begin bringing in an income. Yes and they probably lost their shirt a number of times.
What you didn’t know or ignored in when reading the book or attending the course was how you have to continually learn everyday what you don’t know going in and there is no short cuts. Oops I guess that wasn’t part of the inspiration!
You see the reality is this: There is no easy short cut to success. It takes time and perspiration to get anywhere, be it loosing weight, building a business, changing your parenting style or running a marathon. All these tasks start with inspiration but end with perspiration.
Less we forget we all had to go through 12 years of education before we were allowed to receive our high school diploma. Yet we did it, didn’t we? It’s no different when we want to start a new business, launch a new service, introduce a new product or stop a bad habit. It just takes time and effort and a lot of perspiration.
So why am I writing about this? Because a lot of us are perspiring a lot right now due to the world wide lock down that has affected every aspect of our life. No matter what your take is on this event is, we are all faced with the very same challenge and that’s how do we regroup and recoup from the world shutting down to a crawl.
As a small business owner since 1997, I have had to reinvent myself many times over even getting part time work at times to augment my business income. I’ve started many an enterprise all from my own pocket book, some have done ok others have failed while others are still chugging along. I have no VC money, no wealthy investors it’s all out of my own pocket living one sale to the next as I suspect is the same with most of you reading this. I have learned to apply the art of boxing to running my business: taking the hits, ducking and bobbing my way out of one challenge after another and doing a lot of sweating along the way.
Now more than ever in this extremely challenging market place we will all have to work harder and smarter and perspire a lot more if we want our businesses to survive much less grow. Let’s take our cue from the farmer, who understands the value of hard work and perspiration. We can’t reap if we don’t sew. We can’t sew until we have tilled the soil. We can’t till the soil until we have the equipment to till it with and we can’t purchase the equipment until we have the money to buy it. There are no short cuts to a fall harvest. And there are no short cuts to creating an ongoing reliable income either.
Here’s to perspiration and don’t forget the Right Guard!