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I’m not one who passes on e-mail forwards, but I received the following and wanted to share it with you. As a new father it is especially moving.
Be sure to watch the video after reading this great story (link to video is at the bottom.)
Strongest Dad in the World [From Sports Illustrated, By Rick Reilly]
I try to be a good father. Give my kids mulligans. Work nights to pay for their text messaging. Take them to swimsuit shoots.
But compared with Dick Hoyt, I suck.
Eighty-five times he’s pushed his disabled son, Rick, 26.2 miles in marathons. Eight times he’s not only pushed him 26.2 miles in a wheelchair but also towed him 2.4 miles in a dinghy while swimming and pedaled him 112 miles in a seat on the handlebars - all in the same day.
Dick’s also pulled him cross-country skiing, taken him on his back mountain climbing and once hauled him across the U.S. on a bike. Makes taking your son bowling look a little lame, right?
And what has Rick done for his father? Not much - except save his life.
This love story began in Winchester, Mass., 43 years ago, when Rick was strangled by the umbilical cord during birth, leaving him brain-damaged and unable to control his limbs.
“He’ll be a vegetable the rest of his life,” Dick says doctors told him and his wife, Judy, when Rick was nine months old. “Put him in an institution.”
But the Hoyts weren’t buying it. They noticed the way Rick’s eyes followed them around the room. When Rick was 11 they took him to the engineering department at Tufts University and asked if there was anything to help the boy communicate. “No way,” Dick says he was told. “There’s nothing going on in his brain.”
“Tell him a joke,” Dick countered. They did. Rick laughed. Turns out a lot was going on in his brain.
Rigged up with a computer that allowed him to control the cursor by touching a switch with the side of his head, Rick was finally able to communicate. First words? “Go Bruins!” And after a high school classmate was paralyzed in an accident and the school organized a charity run for him, Rick pecked out, “Dad, I want to do that.”
Yeah, right. How was Dick, a self-described “porker” who never ran more than a mile at a time, going to push his son five miles? Still, he tried. “Then it was me who was handicapped,” Dick says. “I was sore for two weeks.”
That day changed Rick’s life. “Dad,” he typed, “when we were running, it felt like I wasn’t disabled anymore!”
And that sentence changed Dick’s life. He became obsessed with giving Rick that feeling as often as he could. He got into such hard-belly shape that he and Rick were ready to try the 1979 Boston Marathon.
“No way,” Dick was told by a race official. The Hoyts weren’t quite a single runner, and they weren’t quite a wheelchair competitor. For a few years Dick and Rick just joined the massive field and ran anyway, then they found a way to get into the race officially: In 1983 they ran another marathon so fast they made the qualifying time for Boston the following year.
Then somebody said, “Hey, Dick, why not a triathlon?”
How’s a guy who never learned to swim and hadn’t ridden a bike since he was six going to haul his 110-pound kid through a triathlon? Still, Dick tried.
Now they’ve done 212 triathlons, including four grueling 15-hour Ironmans in Hawaii. It must be a buzzkill to be a 25-year-old stud getting passed by an old guy towing a grown man in a dinghy, don’t you think?
Hey, Dick, why not see how you’d do on your own? “No way,” he says. Dick does it purely for “the awesome feeling” he gets seeing Rick with a cantaloupe smile as they run, swim and ride together.
This year, at ages 65 and 43, Dick and Rick finished their 24th Boston Marathon, in 5,083rd place out of more than 20,000 starters. Their best time? Two hours, 40 minutes in 1992 — only 35 minutes off the world record, which, in case you don’t keep track of these things, happens to be held by a guy who was not pushing another man in a wheelchair at the time.
“No question about it,” Rick types. “My dad is the Father of the Century.”
And Dick got something else out of all this too. Two years ago he had a mild heart attack during a race. Doctors found that one of his arteries was 95% clogged. “If you hadn’t been in such great shape,” one doctor told him, “you probably would’ve died 15 years ago.”
So, in a way, Dick and Rick saved each other’s life.
Rick, who has his own apartment (he gets home care) and works in Boston, and Dick, retired from the military and living in Holland, Mass., always find ways to be together. They give speeches around the country and compete in some backbreaking race every weekend, including this Father’s Day.
That night, Rick will buy his dad dinner, but the thing he really wants to give him is a gift he can never buy.
“The thing I’d most like,” Rick types, “is that my dad sit in the chair and I push him once.”
Posted by Kyle Hunt | (0) Comment
I’m a big sports fan so this analogy caught my attention. It comes from Tom Peters (read his books…he’s as sharp as they come in the business world.)
His post said:
People are always looking for a silver bullet to help their businesses. Silver bullets can be great, but so often companies don’t succeed due to poor execution of basic things. They try to throw the bomb but forget to block and tackle.
So I loved seeing a fact in a New York Times Magazine story on Mike Oher, a star lineman at University of Mississippi who had a rough childhood. The second highest paying position in the NFL, after quarterback? Left tackle.
Block and Tackle. Do the basics in your business, do them well, and do them consistently. Sometimes business isn’t all that complicated. You’d be surprised at what happens when you consistently execute simple and sound business practices… “throwing the bomb” down the field is fun, but doing the basics of blocking, tackling and running the ball will usually get you down the field for a score more often and with more reliability.
Posted by Kyle Hunt | (0) Comment
A business brain I learn a lot from is John Jantsch who runs Duct Tape Marketing. Quick side note - it’s important to learn from experts in your field. Read their books, blogs, articles…if you are fortunate - talk with them. Don’t sit back and be content with what you know…learn more.
Anyway - back to this blog post, John Jantsch wrote a blog post titled “Question Everything.” Here’s an excerpt:
Here’s my best advice for making sure that your marketing materials hit the logical and emotional mark. Every time a prospect or client asks a question, write it down. Collect these questions on an ongoing basis, make every sales person note the questions they receive. In a very short period of time you will see patterns develop. If you are getting some of the same questions over and over again you can bet that your marketing materials need to address the answer to those questions.
The questions our prospects ask are often clues to what matters to them. So, forget about the new shiny features of your gizmo and address what’s really on their mind. Do it now, because some of your prospects won’t think to actually ask, they’ll just move on.
A Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) page on your website is a no brainer. Website visitors can cruise from your website to three competitors sites in a matter of a few clicks. Make sure your website is answering their questions and helping them move towards the action of calling you, filling out a form, or buying from you. A quality FAQ page that answers their questions helps them feel more comfortable working with you.
Posted by Kyle Hunt | (0) Comment
"Kyle Hunt is a lover of all things small business and is a Duct Tape Marketing Coach."
