Persistence – Is it worth it?

Paul Rushing — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 22:28:27 +0000

To many times in our lives we are faced with some very mundane things. In business starting a new enterprise can be an exhilarating experience but at the same time there is a period that Seth Godin coined as “The Dip” , that is where the grunt work takes place. It is point where labors outweigh the rewards. This is where many things can fall apart, not just in business, the analogy can be drawn into anything we try to accomplish. It’s how we react during this period that sets the destiny of the outcome. Abandoning something during this period is not necessarily failure sometimes it makes sense to travel a different path.

When I first started my company, that provides online marketing services for car dealers, the goal was to be a turn key solution. I soon realized that was not a valid business plan and narrowed down our known offerings to three core products, automotive seo services, dealer micro sites and craigslist inventory distribution, during the sharp dive in the dip.

This will allow us to become the best at what we do.

We are still working through the dip in our business and it has been trying to say the least. Some days it would seem easier to go back to trading my time for a regular paycheck versus: looking for ways to scale to reach more customers, hiring people to perform tasks such as writing and AR/AP, looking for ways to reach more customers, attending networking events and sharing knowledge, looking for ways to streamline mundane tasks or have someone else do them, keeping service levels high, ad nausem. However, there is no real reward in that for me. So I have been driving on through this period.

Through the sacrifices my family and sanity has made the light is starting to shine, the rewards are becoming evident. The focus has moved away from developing a model to looking for the best systems to insure that our customers get the service they deserve and so we can scale to increase our client base. This is where persistence has paid off in my eyes. I am grateful to be at this point.

Sorry for the lack of recent updates, you can probably tell what has been taking up most of my time.

Living trough “The Dip”

Paul Rushing — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 11:27:59 +0000

I have a lot of things going on personally and professionally. We are considering buying a townhouse in St Augustine, FL, I am having articles published by vendors in the automobile industry, people are seeking advice daily about online automotive marketing and my bank account is not getting any bigger, yet. Saturday was football tryouts for my 10 year old son Tyler. They were timing their 40 yard sprint times, some maneuverability drills and basic throwing drills, to see where the kids were at. Pretty mundane stuff after you see your kid do it. So I took a book with me to catch up on some reading I have been meaning to do.

I was inspired to say the least in what I read and realized that there are times to quit and times to keep plugging on. I even used some of what I learned to encourage my son as well, because he was frustrated that he was not the fastest kid on the field. He and I will both make it through “The Dip”. He now understands that a football team does not need just fast kids, they need big kids like him as well.

I understand that some activities I have been participating in may have no purpose while others have high value if I do not fail on the execution and the townhouse in St. Augustine may be the best thing ever for my family. Live and learn.

Get a coy of “The Dip” by Seth Godin

Who is Paul Rushing » the dip

Persistence – Is it worth it?

Living trough “The Dip”