People around me sometimes ask how I can travel and be gone so much and not just be totally worn out all the time. As my travel has increased this year over previous years, it seems that I get asked this question more and more. I have been giving it some thought over the last few weeks, and today the answer hit me in a pretty big way.
First, if you do something that you truly love doing, then it really isn’t like work – it is just what you do. The phrase has been used in the past that “if you love what you do, then you will never work a day in your life.” And I firmly believe that to be true. But the most profound thing that has come to my mind, as to why my pace is so intense and it’s rare that I fatigue, has more to do with the complexity of what I do than anything else.
What I mean is that every day that I travel and every client I see has a different set of challenges. Our company yields a very high customer satisfaction score, so what I mean by challenge isn’t that we have a lot of unhappy customers, it is simply that they employ us to bring them ideas and strategies that will make their lives easier and their businesses more profitable. A lot of my time especially seems to be spent working with the larger dealers and dealer groups, so the problems and potential for issues to arise are usually magnified. All that is to say, there is a certain thrill of a challenge that keeps me energized, and it’s very rare that any two challenges are the same. Some people find it outright depressing to go somewhere new every single day and have something else hit them that seems like the sky is falling, but after giving it a lot of thought, that is the very basis of what keeps me going.
In full disclosure, a big part of the thrill of each challenge is the level of knowledge and experience that you are generally sitting across the table from. Some of the clients and owners are incredibly successful, very wealthy and usually self-made millionaires many times over, so you aren’t dealing with a low IQ level. It’s not that you are trying to outsmart anyone or that it is any type of contest to see which side of the table prevails in a negotiation/disagreement or other situation, but you are matched in your wit with someone that challenges you in a manner that most people on this earth cannot.
With the thrill of the challenge, you are going to sometimes succeed and other times fail. When you have failed, you have to be able to quickly brush it off and move on to the next thing with just as much energy and confidence as you had before. When you win, you need to take just a minute and enjoy the moment.