In September, 1963, golfer Floyd Root started hitting golf balls at the edge of the Pacific Ocean and kept hitting them non-stop, across country, for 13 months until reaching the Atlantic Ocean. He lost 3,511 golf balls along the way. To my knowledge, his “achievement” still stands as a record today.

The late sports super-agent Mark McCormack, who I appeared on a number of programs with as a speaker, told me he thought most avid golfers approach their weekend game with far more determination, drive, persistence, patience and sustained interest than they do their careers or businesses – and if they flipped their passions, they’d all wind up millionaires many times over. Obviously, Mr. Root was particularly driven, persistent and patient!

The public, outside someone’s life looking, all too often sees the illusion of overnight success. It rarely occurs in reality. Most successes are the natural harvest of a lot of years, a lot of long hours, a lot of patient and persistent seed planting and fertilizing and care. Because people believe too much in the pleasing but mythical possibility of overnight success, they are too quick to give up on their ideas and themselves, too quick to give into disappointment, too easily lured and seduced by the promise of one magic pill after another.

It is quite common to find people willing to devote 3 or 4 consecutive hours at a time to playing a game of golf, playing a video game, or some other recreational pursuit, but quite uncommon to find those same people devoting 3 or 4 hours at a time to reading or studying self-improvement, career improvement or business improvement materials, studying at the library, or even working diligently on a business project.

Similarly, it’s common to see people start entrepreneurial enterprises; comparatively rare to see them sticking to them long enough to achieve success. The much cited statistics about the high rate of business failure are as big an illusion as is overnight success. They don’t accurately measure “failure”; they mostly represent “quitting.”

— Dan Kennedy

Dan Kennedy is an author, consultant and business coach. Additional information at www.FreeDanKennedyNewsletter.com

Economists and experts’ dire predictions of rapidly rising inflation and unemployment for the 2nd calendar quarter (due to rising oil prices) proved to be Chicken Littleish, as inflation barely edged up – and came in four to five percentage points below the Fed’s forecasts. In July, Alan Greenspan’s replacement indicated there may be no need in foreseeable future for further interest rate hikes to restrict inflation. Doom ‘n gloomers are again disappointed!

CONSUMERS APPROVE! In spite of many things that annoy us all, the majority of American consumers are generally satisfied with the way many types of businesses provide goods and services. The net percentage of surveyed consumers giving a “Good Job” ranking is: 83% to supermarkets, 67% to software providers, 61% to banks, 56% to phone companies, 51% to hospitals. (Those falling below 50% approval ratings include airlines, auto manufacturers, investment companies.) (Source: Harris Polls, harrisinteractive.com).

And, in spite of wars (now plural), at-the-pump prices, and economic news on TV at a 70% negative-to-positive ratio (Source: MediaObserver), consumer confidence rankings are in the Moderately High to High range (Consumer Modeling Institute).

Who says we don’t live in good times?