I’ve been absent from this blog and from writing for a little while. The last few months have created an enormous amount of stress across every aspect of life. So, I chose to take a 30-day hiatus to focus on exercise, diet, and not allowing for burnout.

Usually, in my spare time, I think about and conceptualize what I want to communicate through writing. I feel that writing is a very keen way of expressing feelings and thoughts. Over the last 30 days, I’ve taken a break and upped my exercise to be working out, in some capacity, every day of the week. I find that working out, especially when done early in the morning, sets the tone for the day. It provides energy, gets your mind right, gives you time to center yourself, and when you workout sometimes to extreme levels, you’ve already accomplished the hardest thing you have to do that day.

Everybody knows, you can read and learn about it, that dieting also leads to more energy. So, on top of exercising and burning fuel, I’ve increased and bettered my diet over the last 3o days to have optimal energy and be able to think more and consume more work. This has given me the energy that has been required to navigate these last few months.

In culmination with all of this was a key focus of mine to not allow burnout to creep in. When you operate a business, have a young family, and a lot of extracurricular activities and requirements, it is very easy to get burned out in a very short time. Stress can wear you down and chew you up almost immediately. But, in taking time to create some breathing room, I have found a new level of myself, my thoughts, my feelings, and my emotions, that has guided me better over the last 30 days than I’ve been guided in a long time.

For the first time ever, I spent 90 days at home not out traveling, not out growing the business that I started and have really grown over the last 16 years. Our business is born and built every day by being in front of clients and customers – reviewing results, building relationships, and finding newer alternatives. But COVID-19 marked the first time ever that I was simply not able to do that. And what I realized was that 90 days was long enough.

Ninety days was long enough to see the complacency that had crept in. I’m not talking about complacency over just the past 90 days, but more about the complacency that crept in during 2017 through 2019 when the economy was booming and business was rocking and rolling.

It was really easy to become complacent. Any problem that came into our company, it was always able to be fixed by either adding staff or going out and finding new business and new sources of revenue. What I realize is that I had become complacent over the past few years. It took 90 days of being off the road, having to create a continual routine, having to have ups and downs, and having to realize what it was going to take to come out on the other end. And that’s simply to be better. It’s simply to have a better caliber of the expectation that you hold for yourself.

I find myself more engaged in communicating with people. I find myself more attentive and more present when I’m at home with my family. Phones and emails and texts are waiting until family time is over, whereas before that didn’t happen. I find myself more physically fit by creating a very strict diet and workout regemin. I also find myself with a much more vast appreciation for everything that has been built and that I had not had the same appreciation for before COVID-19.

So, complacency will always creep in. And what you have to do is realize how to find it and how to fix it.

I was talking to one of our employees today wishing them a happy birthday, and while on the phone, they were talking about the challenges they’ve had over the past 90 days with COVID-19 and other similar things that have affected their personal life. This person reminded me that their mother taught them to look at things as the glass half full. Don’t think about the negative. Be focused on the positive. And always think about what you have, not what you don’t have.

This employee has been with our organization for a long time. It was such a refreshing reminder when she said, “Everyone has a choice. You have a choice in what you want your attitude to be. Attitude is a choice. And those who choose to have great attitudes generally end up with a better disposition and can accomplish more than those who are negative.”

It was so refreshing to hear somebody else talk about that and utter those words because it really made me remember that attitude is a choice. You have the choice to have a positive attitude and be happy, or you have the choice to not.

One thing I’ve found is that a lot of things are different through the COVID-19 pandemic and crisis. It has allowed me so much more time to spend and connect with friends and people who, otherwise during the course of normal daily life and business, you just aren’t able to connect with, especially as I’ve gotten older.

I’ve talked to more friends and family members, really just from having more time. I think it’s been a very eye-opening thing for me to do – spending time with people and talking to people, even though most of the connections and contacts are calls and aren’t face-to-face. But it’s really been eye-opening about the people who are important in my life outside of work and what it’s allowed me to do with them. And I think as anybody goes through navigating a crisis such as COVID, you’ve got to always find the positive. There is so much negative news and anxiety that if you don’t always find a positive, you’re going to be in a really bad place. And one thing that I’m very grateful that has happened during this crisis is that it has allowed me to connect with old friends, lost friends, and people who otherwise you just don’t really connect with.

During a time like this, a lot of people think that maybe I’m either bored or am attempting to drive them crazy because this is a time when I look at everything. Everyting meaning expenses, details, everything necessary to make both my career and personal life work.

What you find is, when things are really good, which they had been for a long time, you really don’t pay as close attention to every single detail or every little nuance of both your professional and your everyday life. But when you get to a time like this where there’s so much riding on every decision, moment, and movement, it is a time to inspect everything like you never have before.

And it’s not just about saving money. It’s about looking at the details, looking at the bigger picture, paying attention to everything that is going on. Again, not to be flippant about the past, but when things are good, and life is moving at a million miles per hour, you don’t have time to stop. You don’t even think to stop, nor do you need to. But, when you get to a moment in time like the one we’re dealing with right now in 2020 with COVID-19 disrupting our daily lives, you really get better and are able to make yourself better by truly inspecting everything.

Expect what you inspect now more than ever, and you’ll be a better person for it.

What I find myself doing during this time of unprecedented change and disruption is focusing on the things that I can control, and not worrying about anything beyond my control.

It has been said and repeated that this is probably the most unprecedented event in our nation’s history of this kind, rivaling only world wars that have caused this much death. As I go through day-by-day finding unusual times with our organization, family life, and the world in general disrupted, the thing I keep trying to do every day is make small improvements. Whether it’s at home trying to be a better father and spend more time with my kids, or trying to be a more understanding husband, and a better leader in our company.

I try to make a point every day to impact and make improvements anywhere I can. In the past, there was always too much going on and there was no big reset like this that formed my mind and mindset to make small improvements. I have always thought and believed that if you’re not improving every day in some way that you were somehow falling behind. And what I really think you can do to control your own destiny and impact your own life as much as possible during a time like this is focus on any way that you can make a small improvement every day. Because at the end of this, whenever the end of this is, we are all going to be people just trying to survive and get through life as we know it. And that success will depend largely on how much you have improved or gone backward during a time like this.

What I have found through this time of COVID-19 is that while things are more difficult than any time I can remember, in both my professional career and personal life, there is so much opportunity that keeps popping up, that you always have to be on the look-out for it.

Things that you don’t even consider are leading to opportunities everywhere because everyone is looking for answers. I think that’s why the ratings and viewership of the news programs and the talking heads on political commentary are so high – because people are looking for answers. They are looking for leadership during a time like this.

I think what sets real leaders apart from everybody else is that real leaders know to not put the blinders on and pretend like nothing’s happening, but to look for every piece of opportunity. Anything that can make anything better, they take it, execute it, and thrive off of it. That is what is going to help people either get bigger and stronger, or else in some way fall apart.

It takes kind of a weird mind to look for glimmers of positivity and true opportunity when things are so difficult. But I think that’s really what you have to do. I think you can never give up and that you have to always have enough self-confidence to you that you’re going to survive. And that you will find a way to survive, even if things are so difficult you can’t fathom them. That is what I think helps people find real opportunity in times of extreme difficulty.

As we close out April, this is the first month in 16 years that I look back on a calendar and find that I have had zero travel. It’s almost a little mind-boggling. And I don’t know which is more mind-boggling: the fact that this is the first month I haven’t traveled anywhere since starting this company, or the fact that every other month I’ve always been able to go places and find people to meet, sell, and present to while telling the story of the company.

While it is an unusual time, I find a lot of satisfaction in that this is the most leveling time I have ever found in my life. I’ve spent more time at home, I’ve spent more time with my wife and kids, and I have spent more time thinking about the future and the big picture than really I’ve ever done before. It’s a different kind of month coming to an end, but it also gives me a real sense of satisfaction, both in what I’ve been able to accomplish in the past, and what the outset is for the future.

It’s hard when you live your life with about half of it being on the road to not be on the road. It’s a different feeling. It’s a different pace. But it’s also a little refreshing in that you have time to really analyze and really think through the what and the why in your life.

As we end a month like no month has ever ended for me before, it is both a feeling of great relief and a feeling of being ready to get back out and get after it.

From the time of my last blog post on March 13, the world looked completely different. As we sit here today, the coronavirus has now killed more people than the Vietnam War. It has caused a worldwide crisis and hysteria like nothing in any of our lifetimes.

But what I have found out of this crisis is it has taken me back as a person. It has allowed me to redefine who I am and what I truly do. Without the ability to travel hundreds of miles every week, being in tons of different cities, it has made me really exam what I am – and more importantly, what I do.

The beauty of something like this is that when you can redefine yourself, it only makes you better. It makes you appreciate the people around you. It makes you see the difference you truly make in peoples lives, even though you’re not around them. But when you have time to stop and look, and understand all the decisions that you make, all the things that you can control, it can help you understand so much more of who you are and what your true purpose is.

I’ve never been a person who had much of a purpose statement other than I wanted to go out and do as much as I could, as fast as I could. But when that’s taken away from you, you have to sit down and reevaluate what you look at, what you focus on, and what you can do.

While the pandemic has affected the world, and more importantly our nation and many people in our nation, it has made a very positive impact on me to be better and appreciate more deeply everything that I can control.

The marketer in me has named the events of this week “Corona Mania” as the world seems to have gone crazy over the spreading of the novel coronavirus. Think what you want about the illness and hysteria, but the bottom line is it has rattled consumer confidence and shaken the stock market to its core much like someone holding you upside down and shaking all the change out of your pockets.

While every time my phone now rings now it is usually a situation of chaos either from a client or from the office, I am reminded of a couple of sayings that people have taught me over the years that are comforting in times like these.

“When the going gets tough – the weird turn pro”  (Dennis Johnson)

Dennis has been around me my entire career, and when recessions hit or tsunamis take away inventory for dealerships for months or gas climbs to $5 a gallon, there is Dennis always with a smile on his face saying this is the time “when the going gets tough – the weird turn pro.” Meaning that this is when really weird and creative people are able to turn on another gear that allows them to stay out ahead of everyone. It has been a guiding wisdom that I have used many times in the past on days when you just think things are too tough.

“You have to remain calm when everyone around you is acting crazy”  (Mike Strong)

Coming from a guy who went out on his own to start his own company only to learn a couple weeks later his wife was pregnant and then a few months later there was an oil embargo, Mike has weathered a lot of crisis in his career. In talking to him today, he reminded me that when everything is going wrong around you and people are panicking and acting crazy, you have to be calm. I remember when 9/11 happened and I was in college and called him to ask what to do, it was the calmest I ever remember him being. He gave me very simple instructions, told me what to expect and then said call back anytime I was afraid. One of the most intense people I know taught me how to be the calmest person in the room when things get crazy.

“Tough times never last, but tough people do”  (General Patton)

Possibly the greatest military commander of all time who survived 2 world wars and pretty much sealed the defeat of Nazi Germany in the winter of 1945, General Patton was one tough individual.  The stories about him being somewhat crazy are probably not too farfetched, but he definitely was one of the toughest men to ever fight for America and believed that tough times were only temporary and tough people would outlast them.

“A day doesn’t make a week, a week doesn’t make a month and a month doesn’t make a year”  (James Hodge)

I met Mr. Hodge back in 2009 when we were just coming out of the recession. He had a number of dealerships and hired me at one of them first and said if I did a good job I would have a great career with him and if I didn’t he was going to fire me. After working for him for a while and creating a lot of success, one of his stores had a very bad month. Everybody thought it was the advertising, but he sat us all down and said “a day doesn’t make a week, a week doesn’t make a month and a month doesn’t make a year.” I have used that phrase at least a couple hundred times since he told that to me, and we’ve had a great partnership ever since. And now that he has passed on, his grandsons and I have an even closer bond.

All this to say that in a week with as much turmoil as this week has brought, words of wisdom like these are good to have floating around in the back of your mind during times of crisis.