Worthy Accomplishments.

Today's Marketing Cookie should serve as motivation for you to stop dreaming and start doing. What's your big idea? Is it just a dream? Do you have an idea for a daring marketing campaign that would blow the socks off the competition? Do you have an idea for a fantastic new mobile app banging around in your head? What about that marketing book you've been thinking about writing? Will it always be just a dream, or are you ready to start?

Allow me to tell you my favorite story of a legendary all-nighter.

Mr. Edison knew he could create a lightbulb. It was one of his greatest dreams, but he just couldn't find the right material for the filament. He worked through the night testing one thousand six hundred materials and wrote more than forty thousand pages of notes before he finally had a bulb that withstood a forty-hour test in his laboratory. When heated in a vacuum, the right filament must produce a white glow without melting, evaporating, or breaking, but nothing quite worked. He tested coconut fibers, fishing line, and even hairs from a friend's beard, until Edison and his workers finally tested a scorched piece of cotton thread—and it worked!

Mr. Edison was an immensely productive individual and he worked to accomplish whatever dream he had. Even when his dream fell flat or failed, he kept working on it and never gave up. It should inspire us to remember what Edison said: "I have not failed one thousand times. I have successfully discovered one thousand ways to NOT make a light bulb." 

My favorite part of Edison's all-nighters is that by staying awake all night to achieve what may be his most worthy accomplishment, Edison's dream of a light bulb is what enables us to stay awake at night and work on ours!