If It Took Black Sabbath 15 Tries...

Not my genre of choice, yet there is something about Paranoid.

The week of this blog saw the fiftieth anniversary of the band Black Sabbath’s official launch.

As it’s rare for someone to herald from a town where an entire musical movement started, I thought I’d use that as an excuse to recount another famous ‘if at first you don’t succeed, try, try and try again’ tale.

They created heavy metal. True trailblazers.

They started out as a blues band. Then moved darker. And louder.

Their manager, fellow Brummie Jim Simpson, they met as he ran the club where they first played (Henry’s Blues House above the now defunct Crown Hotel at the back of New Street train station).

He hawked their songs around record companies. But got ‘no’ fourteen times.

15th in line was Olav Wyper of record label Vertigo. He came across the band playing live by accident. A young staffer at the hotel he was at early by mistake mentioned they were on at a local pub. Once seen, he took a punt.

“Luck is a place where planning meets opportunity”

And the rest, as they say, is history…

Just last month I blogged touching upon this trope of perseverance related to a fictional anti-virus vaccine.

That took 57 attempts.

Despite Sabbath’s stack of rejections, the stars aligned for pitch number fifteen. At least they got a deal seven-tries quicker than it took The Beatles.

They had a completely new ‘product’. They eventually struck gold (or should that be platinum?) when coming across a label that were consciously searching for something new and radically fresh. A perfect match.

It’s not such the stretch to map this onto any corporate new product sales plan.

Who is more disposed to lean favourably on listening about the ‘new’?

Are you actively trying to work out and identify who they might be?

And is this schedule of persistence built into your diary?