

“You Can’t Do It” is Powerful Motivation - atularora
http://randfishkin.com/blog/55/you-cant-do-it-is-powerful-motivation

======
patio11
My dad said something similar when I was starting out. He apologizes for it at
least once a year. (I totally don't hold it against him, don't worry.)

While I generally don't let People Are Wrong On The Internet get to me, I have
one exception: I am by nature a curmudgeon and keep a list in a notebook of
predictions along the lines of "You will never sell X of this software." It is
eleven lines long at the moment, and has eight smiley face stickers.

I think I'm getting another sticker for Christmas.

------
skmurphy
He needs to turn this into a positive narrative. The Germans have an aphorism:
"Stubbornness is the energy of fools." He should reframe this as a persevering
focus on his prospect's needs. Sam Walton suggested an approach Rand might
consider in his ten rules for building a successful business:

    
    
       Rule 10: Swim upstream. Go the other way. Ignore the conventional wisdom. 
       If everybody else is doing it one way, there’s a good chance you can find 
       your niche by going in exactly the opposite direction. But be prepared for 
       a lot of folks to wave you down and tell you you’re headed the wrong way. 
       I guess in all my years, what I heard more often than anything was: a town 
       of less than 50,000 population cannot support a discount store for very long.
    

I blogged about this in [http://www.skmurphy.com/blog/2008/02/01/focus-on-
your-prospe...](http://www.skmurphy.com/blog/2008/02/01/focus-on-your-
prospects-pain-not-the-brilliance-of-your-product-idea/)

~~~
sliverstorm
It's still good to be able to recognize when you're trying to swim up a
waterfall rather than just upstream though.

------
rgrieselhuber
Quickly becoming one of my favorite blogs, just for the honesty and openness
Rand writes with.

~~~
InfinityX0
[http://www.seomoz.org/blog/what-we-believe-why-seomozs-
tagfe...](http://www.seomoz.org/blog/what-we-believe-why-seomozs-tagfee-
tenets)

Rand's style there piles over into his SEOMoz philosophies, which, not
surprisingly, he's also pretty open about.

------
terra_t
I've got a rule that "If it's not impossible, it's not worth doing." If most
people think that what you're doing is impossible, you've got less
competition.

------
Supermighty
Or, sometimes, it makes things worse.

~~~
Supermighty
But then again that all depends on the person, and their own personal outlook.

------
TotlolRon
_"Now my body says, 'You can't do this boy' But my pride says, 'Oh, yes you
can'."_

\-- Toby Keith, As Good As I Once Was. 2005.

