Taking good swings
Increasingly I believe success is about taking shots on goal not about whether the ball goes in.
It is about putting yourself in positions to succeed often enough that eventually things break your way.
To continue the sports analogy baseball is a perfect example. Sometimes you cannot control whether you get a hit. All you can control is putting the barrel on the ball. If you hit it hard enough enough times over the course of a season or a career the results take care of themselves. The focus needs to be on hitting the ball hard, taking good swings, not on getting a hit.
A real example from my own journey.
In 2019 Perch was featured in the Wall Street Journal in an article about how LSU was investing in our technology.
In a single day that article drove more than 150 inbound leads. At the time we were used to getting a quarter of that volume in an entire month. I heard several times on sales calls “My head football coach walked into my office with that article and said we need to get Perch.” We also raised close to 500K from investors who reached out directly after reading it.
By most definitions that looked like success.
But very little of that was actually in my control. It was a lot of luck!
1️⃣ LSU was our first major client. They installed in September of 2019 and then went on to have one of the most incredible seasons in college football history. A star studded roster with Joe Burrow JaMarr Chase and Justin Jefferson. One of the greatest teams of all time. The traits that led to their success and the traits that made them interested in Perch were likely related but we cannot claim any of that outcome. We were simply in the right place at the right time.
2️⃣ I could not control whether that article was written. I had reached out to hundreds of journalists every month as part of a consistent cadence sharing updates on our business and hoping an article would get written. The number of no’s and unanswered emails was high but all I needed was one yes. I got lucky that the Wall Street Journal needed a piece and that everyone wanted to write about LSU due to their incredible success.
3️⃣ Finally Covid arrived shortly after this article was written. If the timing was off by even a few months or a season everyone’s attention would have been elsewhere.
The takeaway is simple. The money we raised and the brand momentum that followed were largely out of my control.
What I could control was making LSU happy. Providing real value over the course of the season. Showing up every day. And being consistent in a strategy of reaching out to journalists and building relationships over time.
Every day I came into the office trying to put the barrel on the ball. Some days were golden sombreros 😅 Some days were hard hit balls that turned into outs. And some days were home runs.
The only thing that mattered was continuing to take good swings.