Once you have started to build something, the smartest thing you can do is to keep going and use what you already have to make more and new and better.

Once you have started to build something, the smartest thing you can do is to keep going and use what you already have to make more and new and better.

That’s the Coke Theory basically. You see, if you’re Coca-Cola, what you do is keep making Coke. And then you make Diet Coke and Cherry Coke and Vanilla Coke and Coke Zero. That’s all great. It will all work great because you have the resources already in place to keep making Coke-related products. But if you wake up one day and decide it’s time to make coffee, well that’s a whole different story.

If I can drive home anything here it’s that quality products are only quality products if the people who make them are focused on THE PRODUCT. They not only want to make it good, they want to continue making it better. But this kind of passionate dedication takes time. Too often people are seduced by the promise of a payoff in a microwave second. Get in that game if it tempts you. Go ahead and make shoddy websites and gadgets and apps and conferences. I promise you that any success you might find will be brief. Real traffic will come if you continue to provide real value—every single day. And everything follows from there—big checks, big sponsors, big success.

I do believe that you learn ten times more from a failure than you do from any success. You can read all day long about what you are supposed to do, how you need to act and react in any hypothetical circumstance, business or otherwise, but until you actually live through that real circumstance, you understand nothing about it.

Nothing's Changed But My Change by Jeremy Schoemaker, Kate Sprouse