I left the house last Friday at 5:15am for a meeting in West Palm Beach. When I looked at the time in my driveway, I did that math and realized I wouldn’t return until about 11 or so … 18 hours later. This followed a crazy work week, which followed about eight crazier work weeks since late March. For a short while the little voice in my head started convincing me that my life was terrible.
About 6:30 I stopped to grab a coffee and while looking at the purple sky I realized something … I was having a blast. Yes, I’m working crazy hours right now. Yes, I’d rather be spending more time with my wife and daughter. Yes, one of the reasons that I started this business was to travel less and I’ve been on the road for most of April and May. However, I’m doing what I love and I’m 100% engaged in my mission.
Reflecting on my career, I don’t necessarily get excited about the times on top of the mountain or when things were on cruise control. However, I love recollecting about the times when we were focused and building something – working ridiculous hours for a purpose. Those are the times that put a smile on my face.
One time I had a demo scheduled in Vancouver with a new product – the first demo that we’d done for a customer with this product. Because of a paperwork error, I wasn’t allowed to bring the demo equipment into Canada. So… I booked a conference room at a resort north of Seattle, drove to Vancouver and brought my customers down to the resort… and hosted them there. Everything worked out and we won the order –the first one of that product past beta.
Another time when I was VP of global sales, I was with my sales person that covered Europe. We were in Birmingham, UK for a trade show and a potential customer that he’d been pursuing called from Brussels. My sales person couldn’t break away, so we considered having me make the trip for him. However, I had to be in Washington on Thursday and it was Tuesday at 5:00pm. After some chaos and little sleep we made it worked, I made the meeting in Brussels which led to a ton of business, and I made my meetings in DC.
One last memory from my days selling … I had a demo in Pittsburgh on a Tuesday morning and planned to drive to Buffalo all afternoon for a meeting on Wednesday morning. We received a call on Monday from a prospect in Hagerstown, MD that they had chosen our solution tentative on us being able to prove an application. It was the end of the quarter and I jumped on it. After my demo in Pittsburgh, I drove to Hagerstown to prove our application and win the order on Tuesday afternoon, and drove all night to Buffalo. This happened in 1999 and I remember buying a coffee in Altoona, PA at a McDonalds around 11pm like it was yesterday. What a trip.
These memories are awesome – we’re focused, engaged, and stimulated. Yes, we need balance in our lives; but we shouldn’t assume that working hard means our lives are awful. In fact, I’d suggest the opposite.
Funny thing … on Friday night as I was driving home from West Palm Beach a song came on Pandora called Breakdown by Guns and Roses. There is a perfect line in that song: “… it’s funny how everything was roses when we held onto the guns…” I don’t know what those guys meant by this line (Axl and Slash haven’t returned my calls yet), but my interpretation is that as long as you’re working hard and focused, everything will be roses… so keep holding onto the guns!
