Picture yourself swinging a sledge hammer all day and breaking rocks. Doesn’t seem like it would be a very pleasant experience, does it? Someone once asked me, “what would you do to absolutely, positively insure the success of your own business? How hard would you work? Would you break rocks day after day if you knew that doing it would insure your ultimate success? Or would you get lazy and quit breaking rocks and just hope for the best?”
I had a few thousand C L Wilson Income Tax Service sales flyers printed up to distribute. I’ve mailed them to all of our current clients and asked them to recommend us to other people. That was the easy part.  Well, today I went out and started breaking some rocks. I drove my car to a few local subdivisions and apartment complexes, parked the car, got out and started walking with bundles of flyers in my hands. I placed them in newspaper boxes. I had a really good day volume wise, placing over 300 of them today. But I got yelled at by an apartment manager dude – “no soliciting!” I didn’t think this qualified as soliciting. I didn’t talk to anybody, didn’t ring any doorbells, didn’t pester anyone. I just put flyers in paper boxes.  Then in one subdivision I got barked at and almost chased by three dogs that were loose. They ended up being friendly, thank goodness.
Tomorrow I plan to break some more rocks. Why? Well, partly because we’re not yet busy doing tax returns, so I have the time.  And I just feel like I need to be doing something productive – even if it’s not the most pleasant thing. You have to put effort into making any business grow. Maybe I’ll be able to track how much new business we get as a result of placing our sales flyer in paper boxes – and I’ll know that it was worth it.