Today's journal entry is called, The Importance of Showing Up.

Here's the setup: yesterday, I contacted twenty-three different research companies -- all who had purchased very expensive listings in a trade magazine under the heading of "coding" (data processing) services. I provided the specs for two research studies and said that the projects were going to happen in about two-weeks time, so I was looking for a bid, and specifically, I was looking for a company to take twenty more of these projects over the next year.

So it's a good business setup and it was a good business letter looking for estimates, we're talking $10k - $30k of potential income (for them) spread out over a year. This is a great setup, I dream of people contacting me looking for long-term business relationships.

The result: only eight of the twenty-three whom I contacted wrote back to me at all. Six of the eight responded with bids. It's been exactly 24 hours.

What the fuck!

They spent thousands of dollars on expensive ads saying they provide this exact service, and they can't even follow-up with a bid within a day?

So let this be a lesson: it's the importance of fucking showing up. Just by showing up and putting a bid in, these companies put themselves in the top 25% of their industry.