So many people cheer for “the underdog” to win against bigger and better opponents. They cheer for the underdog generally unless they are someone who has something to lose, i.e., a position, award, status or championship – because nobody likes to be outdone and see somebody else take their glory. For Alabama football fans, it has been a very long time since being called or even considered an underdog. But going back not too long ago, things were quite different and there was not such a position of dominance. I love how you can correlate just about anything in life and business to football, even though my underdog story for this week has nothing to do with football.

In an organization, especially one like mine with a lot of “high need for achievement people,” you have egos larger than Alaska, and you will meet a lot of people who have never been wrong about anything… ever. But, every so often, someone or something comes along that knocks the “top dogs” off their positions high above the podium of “how great thou art” and steals a little bit of the glam.

I cannot go into specifics because then there would be no secrets to protect the innocent “high need for achievement people” with this story, but I will cover it in broad strokes. Take a person who has never been the same as the others and may have even caught a little flack for being a little different and working at their own speed. This person came in and did something that few of the top team (you know who – the “high need for achievement people”) have been able to do. It absolutely mortified everyone and left people in awe over what had just happened.

One of my favorite quotes in the world is this: “There are three types of people in the world; those who make things happen, those who watch things happen and those who stand around and wonder what just happened. Which one are you going to be?”  This quote is evident in “the underdog” who went out and made something happen, and even though I wasn’t in the office, I am willing to bet there was quite a bit of wondering what had just happened.

There are a lot of times where people tell me, “I don’t envy being in your position.” But this is one time where I love being in my position because getting to sit back and watch this all go down just makes me grin. It makes me grin because I see an underdog who just had a big win and it makes me grin because I know everyone is about to work a little bit harder to get themselves and their “high need for achievement” personalities back on track.

Everybody has lots of traits that make up who they are and how they act. Some traits are passive in your life and some are dominant. Different situations in your life will cause you to demonstrate actions that are generated because of the traits that make up your inner self.

As I myself am a highly-functioning, need-for-achievement kind of person, there are many different traits that make up who I am and how I act, and they can vary on a daily basis. But, every time something bad or unfair happens to me, which usually does now about on a monthly basis, there is one trait that I look for and am always waiting to come out. That is the trait of resilience. If there is only one trait that my kids grow up to get from me, I just want it to be the trait of resilience. That ability to pick yourself up when something knocks you down, bursts your bubble and breaks your spirit. The ability to bounce back and not do so with a false persona or a game face but a real inner ability to push yourself quickly beyond the bad and get back to the good.

Usually, each month – and sometimes each week – present me with some type of crisis. A great employee decides to quit for another job. But rather than just turn in a notice of resignation they throw you under the bus, poison other people and create animosity and adversity within the organization. Or, when a client who you have repeatedly over-delivered for and totally over-serviced by your efforts sends you a termination notice; just as you finally have your organization where you want it, you are now thrust into survival time. Maybe beyond work, when something happens to a friend or family member like them telling you they have a very serious illness and have a low chance to survive or that their marriage is coming to an end. Regardless of the situation, the bigger it seems you get the more of these issues you have hitting you in the face all the time.

That is why over the last year I have developed such an admiration for the trait of resilience that is very strong in my body and mind. It’s not always the most pleasant thing in life to get to deal with all this controversy, but you sure learn to respect and appreciate your ability to come back from it.

It must have been nice to be a cowboy back in the 1800s. Sure, there were things like shorter life expectancy, illnesses that couldn’t be cured and every now and then a pack of wild Indians would come and try to kill you and steal your horse.  But it had to be a much simpler way of life and thought process than we deal with today. Sometimes when you are going wide open, 90-to-nothing, you don’t have time to recover when you get “shot” while you are traveling down the trail.

What is the trail?  Today in my world, the trail is what I like to call the journey through a week and through life. Some people call it a journey, the road, a mission, a voyage but to me when I’m out and about I like to refer to it as being on the trail. And no, in case you were wondering I am not a golfer and am not talking about a golf trail. To me, the trail is encompassing of all the places that I get to go to day in and day out, along with all the people that I get to meet while out working and traveling.

So what does it mean to get “shot on the trail”? This is when something bad happens and it happens while you are living your life on the trail. One day it may be a call from the office saying that a great employee has turned in a two week’s notice, or an email from a client saying that they respectfully no longer want to use your company’s services. Also included are when you get some really bad news about something or a client is madder than hell about something that you did or didn’t do. The list can go on, but you get the idea of things that I consider to be getting “shot on the trail.” We use to employ a company motto that said, “No Bad News on the Road.”But with the increasing power of communication devices and also how often I am out on the road (or in my case trail), we have done away with that motto because there simply isn’t enough time in the office to deal with all the bad news. Nowadays, the bad news and mishaps just hit you when they want to hit you.

The bad part about getting shot on the trail is you generally have more time to think about what just happened and sit there and ponder why it all just happened to you. It’s easy for bad things to happen, but you are moving so fast that you can easily forget them. It’s not always that easy when you have days to think it over or long hours in the plane or in a hotel room with nothing to do is think about it. So occasionally you have moments of weakness, moments of emptiness, moments of elevated anger and sinking moments when the news is so bad you just sink into your chair and wonder if you will have the power to get yourself up.

There is no moral to the story or easy way to recover from getting shot while on the trail. The best advice I have for myself is to keep on moving and try to move at a higher rate of speed after being shot than you were before you were shot.

There is a great saying somebody once taught me:“Everybody wants to have your job until it’s time to do your job.” And sometimes, I think to myself, I sure would like to give it to them just for a minute.

Being the leader of multiple organizations and a self-described “grower of people,” weeks like this sometimes give me a need to have a drama release-valve that I can pull and let all of the crap I get to put up with go up into smoke.

While I truly enjoy what I get to do and most of the time enjoy the people I do it with, sometimes it can be a daunting task to deal with day-in and day-out. Some of my favorites from this week are:

1. Nobody Wants to Work Together – We construct teams at my company who work in tandem on accounts and specific projects. It’s great to have layers and layers of people who can back each other up, catch mistakes and relieve the burden. But every so often (and this week is no exception), the teams start fighting over workload, who entered a project wrong, who took too long to complete a task, even who wore too much cologne to work.  The thing I wish they all could understand is without the work – nobody in the organization including myself gets a paycheck.  So you might as well do it, do it the best you can and enjoy it.
2. I Deserve More Than I Get to Do – I luckily had a great mentor at my first job out of college. David Martin gave me a great start, a great platform to learn from and the ability to create upward mobility for myself. I was hired to be a sales assistant but quickly found a way to help out in so many ways that I was selling myself (which had been my goal). But one day, when they came around and said none of the sales staff helped go pick up the mail from the post office a few miles away and that our day should be Tuesday and John Paul should be chosen to go get the mail, I didn’t say a damn word. I put a smile on my face, got in the company pick-up truck and drove through downtown Birmingham to the post office to get the mail. Or, there’s the time all the woman in the office were going to a wedding shower for one of the owner’s daughters. They were upset because none of the guys wanted to answer the phone. So, I raised my hand, volunteered and happily answered the phones for two hours on a Friday. Sure, the other guys laughed at me, but I didn’t care. I made the owners happy and showed my true willingness to help the company. Today, it sure is different. Everybody around me it seems thinks a little higher of themselves than they actually are (at least on a week like this one), and they expect everything to be done for them instead of going out and having to do it themselves.  “I deserve” is a very scary thought to have go into your mind and one that I am lucky very rarely enters mine.
3. That’s Not Really My Fault – Sure, the materials you are taking to a meeting halfway across the country are wrong, and even though I put them together for you, let me tell you why it’s not really my fault. I understand that nobody is perfect but when you make a mistake you will always win favor with me or a person like me if you own the mistake instead of making an excuse. People who learn how to own their mistakes can have tremendous careers in an organization like mine.

Sometimes, when traveling hundreds of miles a day at 500 miles per hour, you get tired. You become exhausted. Your mind is trying to still work but it’s impossible to focus. To me, that is my driver. That is what pushes me to continue and try to increase momentum even when you have a decreasing energy level.

It’s times like these where I think of another one of my favorite quotes I learned: “Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die to get there.”

Usually, every time that something goes drastically wrong with work or life you can always point it back to a decision that was made that was the turning point. (Or the breaking point sometimes in my case?)

I made the decision today to terminate someone’s employment contract who was probably one of the most unrealistic and crazy people I had ever met. When I hired this guy to be a contract salesperson for an affiliated company to my agency, I kept telling myself, “What do I have to lose?” Contract sales people have no salary, no benefits, no insurance… so it’s simple – if they do not produce, you don’t have to pay them.

Looking back, that was the turning point that caused me to waste about 50 hours of my life dealing with this individual and getting them out of my company. Fifty hours that I will never get back.  It was one single decision that caused – and still is causing – so much grief and attention that I would pay anything for a time machine to go back and change my decision.

All I can do now is learn to grow from it. Better decisions must be made in order to keep growing and, looking back, I can only learn from my mistakes. Sometimes, all I want to do is move so fast and make so many quick decisions that I can keep on moving, but eventually – and just like this current situation with a contract seller – it causes me to regret my decision.

I’m really looking forward to tomorrow.

Because with a new sunrise, I will have the ability to make a lot of new and better decisions.

I’ve started referring to those nights before big meetings or before the start of a long road trip where you wake up somewhere between midnight and 2 a.m. and never find a way to make it back to sleep as the nights I am working on my “alarm clock suntan.”

It’s given this name because it’s one of those nights where you stare at the alarm clock so much you could literally get yourself a tan while looking at it – consciously trying to make it back to sleep. Usually, you don’t make it back to sleep because you are playing through your mind all the details that go into a meeting or that you are wanting to remember for that meeting.

The start to this week has been nothing short of busier-than-usual.  Both Sunday and Monday nights were “alarm clock suntan” nights, with a lot of the out-of-town staff coming in the office for a big meeting on Monday, and then leaving the house at 5:30 Tuesday morning to get to a large client meeting. Sometimes you simply don’t have any choice but to have monumental events on back-to-back days. In my own mind, here is how I handle days like these:

1. Always remember that you are far more prepared than you ever think you are.
2. Think back to a time when you were very relaxed and try to take yourself back to that place mentally.
3. Remind yourself that nobody is going to be able to look at you and think – gee, that guy didn’t sleep last night. That’s usually never a first impression someone thinks.
4. Know that the end is near… Not the end of your life, but in a few hours you will be past that big event in your life causing you to no sleep, and you will be on to something else.
5. Understand that you have to find time to make it up. My kids sometimes ask after I get home from a week of travel, “Why does Dad sleep so much?”  Well – maybe they will understand one day.

I read a quote the other day that said, “You only get one go-around in this life, so you might as well make it count.”

Those are the kinds of things that help you get through the nights when you find yourself working on your “alarm clock suntan.”