[NIKON D5, 120.0-300.0 mm f/2.8, Mode = Aperture Priority, ISO 4500, 1/4000, ƒ/5.6, (35mm = 360)]

I wanted to open with a photo of a young baseball player at bat.

A batting average of 300 or higher is considered excellent, and a standard higher than .400 is a nearly unachievable goal. Ted Williams of the Boston Red Sox was the last Major League Baseball (MLB) player to do so, with enough plate appearances to qualify for the batting championship.

So in baseball, you will strike out 7 out of 10 times at bat if you are perfect. When you start out playing, that number of times of failure is more significant ~ you are learning.

“My great concern is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content with failure.”

~ Abraham Lincoln

In every business model, you must make some cold calls to get business. This means you will pitch your product or skills to people who do not know you.

This classic study from Kenan-Flagler Business School finds that “cold calling has only a 2.5% success rate.” This 2.5% success rate means that an experienced sales guy can make one appointment or another good follow-up per working day.

When you start in business, you start with your network of people who already know you. Cold calling is made with a referral; the rate jumps to 40%.

“Remember that failure is an event, not a person.”

~ Zig Ziglar

In a nutshell, I have learned through more than 20 years of running my own business that too many quit just before their big break. If we know that the percentage of success in cold calling is around 2%, and you have spent the last couple of months contacting 98 different sources, the numbers say that # 99 is most likely when the break happens.

Since I was in college, I was always doing freelancing. Most of this was on the side until 2002 when I did this 100% of my income—full-time freelancing.

In 2002, I showed 35mm Slides and 6×7 Slides to get jobs.

When I lost my job due to layoffs in 1990, I sent out slides to get jobs. I had around 200 identical sheets of 20 slides that I sent out all over the country with cover letters. Not one job came from all that work.

I decided to return to school and work on my M.A. in Communications. I found a few jobs working in a portrait studio and later as manager of a one-hour photo lab.

When I finished my master’s in 1993, I sent out another round of portfolios. This time I got my job at Georgia Tech.

I believe that from the time I lost my full-time job with The Commission Magazine in 1990 till 1993, I must have sent out [Cold Calling] on more than 500 jobs.

“I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”

~ Michael Jordan

Here is a great commencement speech made by Denzel Washington, which he said to “Fall Forward”

Today be like Thomas Edison and experiment. Try something, and if it fails, try something different.

Like Denzel, pray daily for the strength to continue.

Any marketing campaign can take three months to see the results of those efforts. Until then, if anything, you may see a slight decrease as the changes take effect.

“If you don’t fail, you are not even trying.”

~ Denzel Washington