80% of Success Is Showing Up*

In November 2003, the culmination of 18-months of work on a new signage system was about to be unveiled to our Executive Leadership Team at Banana Republic, including then-CEO Paul Pressler. That meeting was scheduled for 8AM on Friday morning. We were staging it at the Embarcadero store which was to open for business at 10AM. We had to be quick.

Thursday night, I stopped by an ATM in our old neighborhood to grab some cash for the next day. I should mention that I used to live in a really bad neighborhood.

[A stolen runaway van full of porno that crashed into my house on Christmas night. As I mentioned, we used to live in a really bad neighborhood, but this one is part of another story...]

Somewhere between 10:30 and 11:00PM, after an altercation** in the bank parking lot, I found myself being pulled Indiana Jones-style behind a 91 Pontiac that was speeding away from the scene as I was trying to pull the driver out of the car window. I've also done some stupid things in my life and that night, I learned that pavement is really hard on shoes, jeans, blazers, hands and knees. I loved that blazer, but I still have the scars on my hands from that night to remember it. Fortunately, I got my car and house keys back which undoubtedly prevented further shenanigans. I finally got to bed about 3:30AM that night, only to wake up at 6:30AM to make the meeting.

[The thieves stole my car and house keys — and I ran after them to retrieve them. I got them back... but not without some effort.]

I finished the presentation with my hands, bloodied and bandaged, tucked into my sweater which happened to have extra-long arms... pulled from the closet that morning specifically for that reason. When the presentation wrapped (a successful one, by the way), I reached up to grab a presentation board and my sleeve slipped back revealing the aftermath of the night before. My account manager gasped: "Oh my God! What happened!?". I briefly outlined the details of previous night and she asked: "Why didn't you just stay home?". I replied, "We've been working on this for 18-months and today is the final presentation. Not showing up was not an option. But now I'm going home". She replied, "Fair enough... and good plan."

*Woody Allen once said, "80% of success is showing up". I'd have to agree. In that case, I had every excuse to stay home, but missing the closing scene of well over a year's worth of excruciating meetings and unapproved design solutions wasn't going to happen... bloody and bruised or not.

I relayed this story to my classes this week who've likely had a pretty hard week themselves. For 15-weeks, they've worked to deliver their own closing scene. I hope that they felt a little better about their weariness and were able to muster a second wind. By the results we saw this week, I think they were.

Class of Spring 2012: Great work... and good-on-you for showing up.

Comments

[NetOpWibby]

Wow, that's a crazy story, but inspirational as well. I feel like I would have done the same thing.