“If you are not doing it better than you did yesterday, then you are waiting for someone to come take it away.”

How true it is.

I learned this lesson “the hard way” when one of the biggest names in the Pharmaceutical industry taught a young punk a great life lesson.  I wasn’t a big deal, but life was good.   We were selling a well known over the counter product that people were not excited to buy in a public store.  So, I did what any know nothing, 20-something would do, called up one of the biggest pharmaceutical companies and asked how I could start buying it to sell on the internet.

Well, somehow my charm worked and a week later we had an account setup and we were on our way.  The lesson came 4 or 5 years later while I was sitting on the beach with some life long friends in New York.  One asked if I was still selling a certain product online, to which I replied yes.  She told me that the big company (name is not important) was going to sell the product directly online themselves.

I thought for a second and told her that they wouldn’t do anything like that because it would upset all of their retailers.  She paused and said, “I know they are going to do it.”

I asked her how she “knew,” and she replied:

“Because, I am writing the copy for their website.”

Talk about a “jaw drop” moment.

The reality is, if you are not always striving to do it better.  If you are not always making sure that you are delivering everything your customer expects you to, and more, then you are simply waiting for someone to come and take what you have built away.  That was the lesson I learned that day.

Sure enough, within 6 months, we were effectively out of business.  Sure, we were still selling product, but not at the level that we had been before.  The manufacturer began selling a product that was such a great value to consumers, that it was a no brainer to buy it directly from them…and they wouldn’t let me buy the product in order to compete with them.  So, yeah, how about ‘dem apples?

A New Beginning

It took me a while to mentally recover from what had happened.  It also helped to create financial issues as well.  Because, after all, I knew what I was doing, right?

Since then I have spent time thinking about that moment every single day.  It doesn’t haunt me in a bad way, but it serves as a huge reminder that nothing in life is for certain.  No matter what you think you have, no matter how insulated you are from outside forces, no matter how smart you are, it can all be taken away in an instant.

This site is the culmination of things I have learned, and continue to learn, since that day almost 15 years ago.  I have come to realize that momentum is one of the keys to success, both emotionally and physically.  I hope that I can help you find ways to build momentum in your life, your relationships, and in your business.

 

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