How To Oomph Your Oomph

I don’t know what to tell you about first.

I had one company that failed on me this week. Really painfully, ugly puke-failed me.

Or I can tell you about the other company that I sold this week. Selling a business is 90% personal and only 10% business.

Maybe I can tell you about the company I’m about to start next week. I’m excited about it but starting a company is brutal. It’s a maze until you find the cheese at the end.

Everything is a bit too fresh. I don’t know how I feel about them yet.

All day yesterday I was on the phone and I had to switch from mindset to mindset. That’s hard on my brain.

Sometimes I’d get on the phone to talk about the company I was starting but I was still feeling like someone had just shit in my mouth because I had just been talking to the company that was failing.

Sometimes I’d be talking about the company I was selling and everything seemed so hopeful but then there would be a stumbling block in the deal and I’d have to figure out how to jump as high as possible to get over that stumbling block.

Every deal in the world has stumbling blocks. That’s why 90% of companies fail.

People don’t realize that there’s idea, execution, selling, and then… closing.

Closing is often the hardest. It’s where everyone is deluded into thinking things are done, that the sky is all blue from here on out, but there’s still one more blizzard/tsunami to get through.

I don’t know, it’s all too close. Later.

Instead I want to talk about Tiger Woods. The other day I was thinking about the woman he was first caught having an affair with. Would she go on my podcast?

But wait, that’s not what I want to talk about either. That’s gossip.

A friend of mine went to a golf tournament that Tiger Woods was playing at. “He did ok,” my friend said.

First off, that’s amazing to me. That even the best in the world is sometimes “ok”.

That must be frustrating to know you are better than everyone and yet most of the time you still rank at “just ok”.

Does Tiger Woods cry when he is just ok? I probably would.

I know I would. It’s why I don’t play in chess tournaments anymore. I don’t want to be just ok. That’s why I’m not Tiger Woods.

That and other things.

“But here’s the thing,” my friend was telling me, “after the tournament it was starting to get dark and for some reason I stood around to keep watching.

“Tiger Woods suddenly came back on the course when everyone was gone. He shot 250 long drives, one after the other.

“He had a coach with him. After each drive, the coach came up to him, talked to him, stepped back, and Tiger Woods hit another shot.

“250 times, one after the other, he didn’t take a break. And that’s after playing 18 holes in a tournament all day!”

That’s like what they say about Michael Jordan. When he was at the top of his game, his teammates would say, “he was always the first at the court each day and the last to leave, practicing.”

I always wonder about the other pro players who said that about Jordan- why didn’t they show up early?

They know that was the #1 key to Jordan’s success. Why didn’t they emulate it?

Warren Buffett would drive 20 hours to the towns of public companies he felt were super-cheap.

He’d put up signs on telephone poles, “If you want to sell your shares call this number” because he figured those towns would have plenty of shareholders.

And that’s how he made his very first million dollars. He bought the cheap shares and rode them up through the 1950s.

Or, I will tell you about someone not too many people know, Kay Cannon. She commuted to work each day on a subway in NYC. While on the subway she’d write another page in a screenplay.

Three years later, one of the most successful teen movies ever, Pitch Perfect, was made. Her movie she wrote while commuting on the Subway. Now “Pitch Perfect 2" is about to come out.

I’ve seen Pitch Perfect. It’s great. I highly recommend it. It’s a “choose yourself” sort of story written by a “choose yourself” woman.

We all know this is the secret. Staying after the tournament with a coach and hitting 250 more balls.

Or getting to the court before everyone else and staying until everyone leaves.

Or writing every day on the subway.

“A little more every day” adds up to….what?

Being the best basketball player ever, being the best golf player ever, making your first million, having one of the top movies ever.

Or maybe just having more fun doing what you love in the spare scraps of time we can all find in our lives.

What else does it lead to?

It leads to people paying you to do what you love.

Think about it: Tiger Woods takes A STICK and hits a ball as far as possible. He gets paid $100 million a year to do that.

I quit advising the bad company finally. I helped sell the company that I think will change the world. And I’m almost done launching the new company.

But every day I like to write these posts. You read them. I love you.