Toughness

If it doesn’t kill you it makes you stronger, or so the saying goes.

The past year has been a wild ride. I have gone through 8 salespeople now. Some people lie, some people cheat, and some people can’t do what you ask them to do (or just won’t). Dealing with people is hard, because when you demand a lot from someone and they don’t deliver, you’re disappointed in them, but when you don’t demand enough from people and they don’t deliver, you are disappointed in yourself. Managing is insanely difficult.

Being an entrepreneur requires you to have a close personal relationship with everyone in your company, and thats a great thing when times are good, but when times are bad - everything changes. All of a sudden daily tasks are questioned, Why do you want this from me? Well you were supposed to be doing it, but we let it slide. Well, I am the first to point the finger back at myself, and I’ve learned that discipline doesn’t make you successful sometimes. Discipline ALWAYS makes you successful, but you can’t be disciplined sometimes. Thats exactly what discipline is, its ALWAYS crossing Ts and dotting Is. Discipline is always doing all of the little things that make you great, that make you successful. Discipline is the toughness to make that extra phone call, write down that last request, finish the play all the way through the whistle.

Toughness makes winners out of players. Toughness makes good people great. Toughness allows discipline to come through and force you to succeed because you did all the right things. Not just some of them, or most of the time, but ALWAYS and EVERYTHING.

You have to be tough to be disciplined, and you have to be disciplined to be successful. If you can’t take some pressure, you will never be tough, and you will never be successful. Success is the overcoming of pressure through toughness and discipline, and it is the relentless pursuit of success that makes life awesome.