If you’re a sports fan you’ll hear the old cliché: when the going gets tough, the tough get going. And I come from one tough town: Pittsburgh, PA. When the steel mills closed the town didn’t die. Sure there was a lot of pain. But the town got tough, reinvented itself and became a high tech center. The people in Pittsburgh just don’t know how to quit. Their favorite pastime any given Sunday is Steeler football. They just don’t follow the team, they live for the team. They call themselves: Steeler Nation. Although we currently live in Florida, it’s not hard to find die hard Steeler fans. They’re everywhere. Now I am sure there are many other towns like Pittsburgh from the point of view of having good people who just don’t know how to quit. But growing up in Pittsburgh gave me a tremendous advantage in business. It doesn’t matter how bad the business climate is, I could be having the worst day of my life or the worst business year ever and every day I wake up with determination to win. If that day goes bad, I wake up the next day and start all over again. This work ethic came from watching my father and the hard working people in Pittsburgh doing what they had to do no matter how difficult the job to feed the family. In these current economic times we all need the determination, will and drive that I learned by living in Pittsburgh and watching the sports teams never quit.
Soon the Steelers team players will be at training camp for the upcoming football season. This is always big news in Pittsburgh. You can bet that right now in Pittsburgh, Steeler fans are already talking about “Let’s all go to the Super Bowl” again in 2010 and make it two in a row.
As business people, let’s all get that never give up spirit and prosper during these difficult economic times.