You Sleep When You Die
you sleep when you die...and other unpopular thoughts from retail marketing leader, Jordan Zimmerman
In the world of advertising, a whole lot of the “experts” agree that I’m crazy. I wear that as a badge of honor. Why? Well, for one thing, because that’s the way the greatest business leaders have always thought. They didn’t listen to the experts. They found new strategies: strategies for innovating and changing a sector, strategies that the experts never thought about, strategies for improving business performance through innovation and differentiation. That’s insanity. That’s genius.
I got a big surprise this week when I was named a Regional Entrepreneur of the Year by the national accounting and consulting firm Ernst & Young. Okay, I knew I had been nominated, but honestly, I really didn't expect to win. Today, I'm writing this blog for one reason and one reason only: to inspire all the entrepreneurs out there who are pursuing their own dream, and who are going through what I call the "dumpster phase" of launching a new company.
This competition was a cool way to emphasize the importance of fitness in the workplace (and everywhere else) … by turning healthy weight loss into a game… As a nation, we need to focus more on the ways we can make maintaining a healthy lifestyle more fun for everybody. I hope more organizations across the country follow this example and get their people engaged in healthy, sustainable weight management programs like our zBiggest Loser Challenge.
When Jamie Moyer pitched his first big-league game for the Chicago Cubs, Ronald Reagan was president. And no one had ever heard of the World Wide Web.
That was back in 1986, when Moyer was an unknown twenty-three-year-old rookie. On April 17, Moyer became anything but unknown. He put a big neon light on top of an amazing career that has lasted longer than any “expert analyst” thought was possible.
Take a moment to think about the events that really transformed and defined this nation. Were they easy to pull off? Of course not. I can think of three that (according to the experts at the time) shouldn’t have happened. They were impossible… “Impossible” is a word we use when we want permission to stop thinking about how to achieve an important goal. Permission denied. “Impossible” is no excuse.
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