High school basketball season begins in New Jersey in a few weeks.
I have followed one particular high school for decades.
Formerly St. Patrick, the current day The Patrick School is one of the top programs in the country. No less than 3 NBA prospects currently play for this *high school* team, including the likely #1 draft pick in the 2021 draft.
5 former or current NBA players have graced the hall of Pat's, including superstar Kyrie Irving. He does things with the basketball that awe fellow NBA players but this is no surprise to me. We all saw the unbelievable work ethic Kyrie had as a high schooler, putting in countless hours in the gym. He outworked all other players for 10,000 plus hours. Now he reaps the benefits of his 100% commitment to basketball.
He never took short cuts. Now he is one of the best ballers on earth, famous, wealthy and he also has an NBA title in his pocket.
But some people never get it. Most folks try to take short cuts in their field of choice and face a steep, precipitous, fall.
Steep Fall
Folks email me regularly asking for a sponsored post placement on Blogging From Paradise. I quote my fixed price. Almost always, the blogger responds with a silly $5 counter-offer – after I explicitly alerted them to my substantially higher, non-negotiable, fixed price – within a few minutes or hours.
I immediately label their email as spam and move on. Ouch. Talk about a steep fall. Imagine how difficult things get if you try to build a business when all of your emails go to spam? Eventually, all of their emails go to spam and they either quit their business or fail for years.
Every one of these bloggers and/or consultants wants to take a short cut to business success. Fools believe taking the short cut of paying $5 gives their business massive exposure, alignment with a respected blogging brand and instant business via a sponsored post on my site, all on the cheap. But as always, fools live in an alternate, deluded Universe because their $5 barter lands all future emails in my spam folder.
Good Things Take Time and Generous Effort
Becoming successful in any field requires time and generous effort. Working for the love of your craft and putting in sustained effort positions you to be at the top of your niche in a world of panicked, desperate, frenzied shortcut seekers.
I have been blessed to be featured on Forbes, Fox News, Entrepreneur and the Virgin blog. Contributors from these sites pitched me. Do you know the amount of generous creating and connecting it required for me to pop up on the radar screen of such world-renowned publications? I worked generously for years and have been generously rewarded. Give. Receive.
I recall a while back how someone wanted to land a feature on my blog. I advised him to patiently build a bond with me by helping me out. He told me he had no time to befriend me because he was on a tight deadline. His shortcut landed his emails in my spam folder. The steep fall frenzied bloggers suffer by falling into spam folders and subsequent attempts to dig out of this email hell simply mirror back their foolish attempt at taking a shortcut.
Relax. Put in the time and work. You will succeed and the ride will be much sweeter.
