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Before Roger Bannister ran a mile in under four minutes, some doubted it could ever be done. Some barriers seem impossible to break, but they’re just waiting for the person daring enough to come along and break them. What kind of inbound marketing can we do today, striving to break the next barrier of what “they” say can’t be done?
“The man who can drive himself further once the effort gets painful is the man who will win.” When Roger Bannister decided to run on a windy day on May 6th, 1954, he probably wasn’t certain he’d run a mile in under four minutes, the first time the goal had ever been achieved by mankind. But chances are pretty good that he knew it would be tough, and that despite the difficulty of the goal, he was going to try and keep trying. For Bannister, the goal was achieved that day — and his new record lasted for a total of 46 days, before it was broken by a rival runner, John Landy.
Bannister wasn’t discouraged. Instead, he set his sites on the next goal – beating his rival Landy in a side-by-side race. Bannister achieved that goal in August of 1954, then retired from competitive running, having achieved his sporting goals and moving on to pursue a career in neurology.
Bannister’s quote can easily be applied to inbound marketing, SEO, or whatever field you find yourself in. The point Bannister made is that doing something great isn’t easy – it takes drive and effort to achieve the final goal.
Think you’ve got the next, best, greatest idea for marketing? Try it. Fail. Try it again. Push on, and push harder than the competition. Achieve your goal, then be ready for someone else to set the next big thing after you. Train, prepare, try again, and work towards your next goal.
If you’re going to go where no inbound marketer has gone before, it’s going to take effort and the will to push past the pain to achieve results. Seth Godin echoed Bannister’s sentiment when he said, “The only thing worse than starting something and failing… is not starting something.”
And if you’re still not convinced, let me leave you with another Bannister quote:
“Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up. It knows it must outrun the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning in Africa, a lion wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the slowest gazelle, or it will starve. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a lion or a gazelle–when the sun comes up, you’d better be running.”
You’d better be running. Click to read one of Slingshot SEO’s own studies on how to achieve online success and let us help you with the drive to win.
Dustin Clark
@DustinAClark
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