I saw an entrepreneur that i had met a year ago for coffee this morning. My advice last year was to get "fucking aggressive" about customer acquisition. He was a nice young guy fresh out of business school. When I gave him the advice -- I recall he looked at me funny. Either because I swore or because I looked funny.
Well, I saw him this morning and he came up to me and said -- "now I know what you mean by "get fucking aggressive"". The tone of his comment revealed that he understood what I had said a year earlier. He's been working hard now for a year and "groks it". He understands that things don't happen just because you think they should. Inertia in the business world is very powerful and being an entrepreneur takes hard work....ferocity and sometimes being fucking aggressive (about customer acquisition-- one of my favorite focal points of advice).
I smiled and we laughed.