TWTW.

The world of advertising being what it is and me being practically the most-senior of the few senior citizens still alive and still kicking, I get a lot of calls from friends, colleagues and clients.

Friends call me about getting work. 

Colleagues call me about getting new business.

Clients call me about slow sales, or under-performing work.

George, what can we do?

Almost five decades ago when I labored for my one endless season playing la esquina caliente, the hot corner, for Hector Quetzacoatl Padilla, aka Hector Quesadilla, manager of the Seraperos de Saltillo in the Mexican Baseball League, I learned something I think about almost every day.

More often now that I own and operate my own small-large advertising agency.

I think we were up by two runs and it was the top of the ninth and the Tampico Estibadores--the Stevedores--had their player manager Hector Espino coming to bat.

The bases were already loaded, there were two down, we were out of solid pitching and we were facing a future Hall-of-Famer and the best-hitter in the league. Maybe the best player ever to play in the Mexican Baseball League.

With 484 home runs, Hector Espino is considered the greatest player
in the history of the Mexican League.  

The Estibadores had the bases full. All we could hope for was a pop up, or a strike out, or a sudden torrential downpour if we were to escape the friendly confines of Estadio de Beisbol Francesco I. Maduro with a win.

Instead, Espino clobbered a pitch high and inside that went screaming right down the third-baseline at about shoulder height above the faded lime lines the demarcated foul and fair.

Of all the screaming line drives I've seen and heard in my misbegotten days, this one by Espino was the screamiest. I don't know what a German 88mm shell sounds like as it approaches--I know that was the gun that most scared Allied soldiers during World War II--but even with all my faculties still relatively intact, I cannot imagine a terrestrial object moving faster than Espino's line drive.

I instinctively knew I had no chance of reaching across my body with my left, gloved, hand and nabbing it. However, reflexively I stuck out my meat hand at just the right moment and somehow nabbed the ball out of the twilight air. And somehow held onto it. And somehow didn't break eleven bones in the process, though our backup shortstop, "Doctor" Jesus Verduzco, who was a third-year medical student in the off-season at Tecnológico de Monterrey, had me keep my hand in ice for two hours after the game, then compressed it in an Ace-bandage then had me soak it again for two-hours for every day for a week.

Hector Quesadilla hugged me after the game and said repeatedly to me thereafter, "Jorge Navidad, you have tee doubleyou, tee doubleyou. You have The Will To Win."

TWTW. 

The will to win.

To all those calling me about some business or career miasma, I say the same thing. I don't really care if it's not civil or mannerly or kind. I don't really care if it's a little brutal and mean.

I say, pick a person you know from business who makes a lot of money and does a lot of what you want to be doing. Think hard about them and their success. Study them like Joe Louis would study an opponent before a fight. Know their every strength and how to avoid them. Know their every weakness and how to exploit them. Then stick out your hand and be willing to get hurt if that's what it takes to win.

Too many people in the scenarios I've enumerated at the start of this post, look for something that's similar to the something they're struggling through. They're getting snookered at their current agency, so they look for a new agency. Not ever considering that all agencies are pretty much the same. E Pluribus Snookered, or something to that effect.

They don't employ TWTW.

They ain't willing to take a missile barehanded.

By the way, I still feel the pain today. Somedays more than others.