Within the last year, Sprint has had commercials on with the old, “can you hear me now,” Verizon guy saying he has switched to Sprint because they are within 1% of reliability and like half the cost.
***Note – I recently switched from Sprint to Verizon. This post is in no way saying you should switch! I am not endorsing or hating on any service, that is for you to do on your own.***

This commercial has always struck me as odd. Sprint is essentially saying: our service is not as good as theirs, but it is close, and hey we are cheap. Also, having Sprint for the past few years I knew that there had to be fine print as the service in my area was terrible (the 1% reliability is only for the top106 markets FYI).

But assuming for a second this claim is true, what does 1% really mean?

• For cell phone coverage between Sprint and Verizon, that is about 600,000 dropped calls in one year.
• On a $200,000 mortgage, going from 3.5% to 4.5% rate is $30,000 more over the life of the loan.
• There are 2400 minutes in a work week, 1% equals 24 minutes of lost productivity.
• 1% of the US population (323 million) is 3.2 million people.

Would you want a doctor to be 1% on an incision, or a pilot to be 1% off on his flight path…I don’t think so. One percent matters!

1 percent matters!

How does this all relate to education you may ask? Well, I think to be an amazing educator you have to become a one percenter. I think we have all had or seen that teacher that has a major impact on everyone they come into contact with. What I think we don’t see is the one percent more they do, that just “good” educators do not.

I cannot tell you what that one percent is for you, but I know if you want to be one of those educators that has great impact, you have to figure it out….and then do it.