So the price of persistence,
Over my shoulder there is, you can see a little fire. The truth is, there was a log about that big on it, probably, I don’t know, eight or ten weeks ago, and now it’s down to this little bit here. I heard a quote about persistence recently that I thought was quite interesting: Persistence is not a one-off thing. It’s not one big thing; it’s lots of small things that you’ve got to do back-to-back to back. And that’s what it’s been like trying to get this log burnt out. I’ve probably lit 10 to 15 fires on that to try and get it to burn down. I’m in the country here. The log was massive. There was really no alternative, but it wasn’t one thing—I had to keep going at it. And you have setbacks as you go through. There were times when I tried to get it to burn, and it felt like all the other wood around it was burning, but that actual log was not burning much at all. But through persistence, I finally got this thing down to about maybe a metre wide, and it started at 15 metres wide.
Now, what’s this got to do with you and your business? The reality is, if you’re facing challenging times, I just want you to have the mindset that just getting through this one thing will lead to something on the other side of it. You may have to persist multiple times to get things done, but sometimes we’ve just got to aim for a very close goal. I do quite a lot of running, and once a month, I’m a pacer for other people. I’ve often run with kids when they’re trying to get a personal best, and I’ll say, “Just run to that next tree, that next marker that we go by, and then once we get there, let’s go to the next thing.” Because persistence isn’t about doing one big thing all at once: it’s about winning those little battles one after another. See you next time.