3) Web Site Promotion

The Two Woodcutters

Here is a story that I’ve used to guide my life for quite some time. I heard the story of the woodcutters a long time ago, but it stuck with me over the years.

There were two woodcutters who challenged each other to a chopping contest. Whoever could chop the most wood from sunrise to sunset would be the winner.

One of the woodcutters was built like a NFL tackle, and looked like he could do some damage to the logs with his bare hands. The other woodcutter was tall, but lanky, and lacked the muscle of the larger man.

The big woodcutter thought that he had this contest in the bag, because his opponent was so scrawny. The men began at sunrise and both chopped wood with great fury. Every so often, the big woodcutter saw his opponent sit down.

Since this happened every couple hours, whenever the the skinny man sat down, the large man smiled, and said to himself, ” I’ve got him”. This went on for the entire day.

The large man didn’t even stop chopping wood to wipe the sweat from his forehead. He never remembered working so hard in his entire life, and was certain that he had won the contest by a wide margin. He could hardly wait to claim victory at the end of the day.

At sunset, a crowd of people gathered to see the results of the contest. They looked at the pile the big woodcutter had chopped and the crowd cheered, because it was indeed an impressive pile of wood.

Then everyone went to check the pile of wood the skinny woodcutter had chopped. To everyone’s surprise, especially the big woodcutter, the skinny man’s pile was clearly larger than the pile produces by the big man.

The big man couldn’t believe his eyes, and said foul play must have been involved, because he had not stopped working for a moment, and had clearly worked harder, since the skinny man had frequently taken time to rest.

The skinny man raised his hand to explain to the big man, and this is what he said.

“You thought that I was sitting down to take a rest, but because my back was to you, you couldn’t see what I was doing. I only sat down to sharpen my axe.”

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What is the point of this story ? I think it is that we must learn to always keep our tools sharp. Whether it is our technical skills, our people skills, our skills as a parent, a mentor, or as a friend.

Sometimes we forget that in life, our full value as a human being can be revealed through something as simple as being a good and true friend.

The burly woodcutter in the story is like the myriad of entrepreneurs who have have their noses to the grindstone, trying to do a hundred different things they believe it takes to market on the Internet every day. In the end, sometimes they are so busy with their daily activity, they can hardly see the forest for the trees.

I value hard work, but what I truly marvel at is hard work with the assistance of automation. I love tools in whatever form that liberate us from tedious and repetitive work.

It is not that I disdain manual work. A number of years ago, I held jobs which required great physical effort every day, and I enjoyed the challenge of those jobs. What I disliked was boring, mundane, mind-numbing, repetitive work.

I love the freedom that results from time saved in not engaging in tedious work. I feel sorry that there are so many people in the world who toil everyday doing exhausting manual labor, not by choice, but out of necessity.

Life has been, and continues to be, for far too many people on the earth, a day to day struggle for survival. The time it takes each day to insure survival leaves no time for other pursuits, whether they might be intellectual, artistic, spiritual or otherwise.

When I first saw a computerized machine tool, a number of years ago, I thought to myself. This is something incredible that can free men from manual labor, and I thought about something the German mathematician and philosopher, Leibnitz said. (1646 – 1716)

“One might object that artisans today work out of necessity, if all their needs were satisfied,then they would do not work at all. I, however, maintain the contrary, that they would be glad to do more than they now do out of necessity.

For, first of all, if a man is unsure of his sustenance, he has neither the heart nor the spirit for anything.” and, “It is unworthy of excellent men to lose hours like slaves in the labor of calculation.”

This was the start of my lifelong fascination with computerized machine tools, other types of automation machinery, and computers in general.

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I like the skinny fellow in the story above. It is such a simple story. The skinny man didn’t care what anyone said, he just had a quiet confidence in what he was doing, and knew clearly that he was using a sharper tool than his competitor.

At the end of the day it is the quality of what we can accomplish that will set us apart from other entrepreneurs on the Internet.

I feel very fortunate to have found some of the very best tools on the Internet for web site promotion. My goal through this blog, is to provide access to these tools, as well as the training needed to use them effectively. I hope this blog will assist internet marketers who are searching for the very best tools for their US web site promotion.

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