For the last couple of weeks, it has felt like I am wading through a swamp. And in case you are wondering, no I am not off on a hunting trip. 🙂

By wading through a swamp, I mean it is a period of my life and career that is culminating all at the same time with more intense projects than ever before. Every day, there is a fight of some kind with an alligator coming at me for blood. Now that is just a dramatic way to prove a point that I’m up to my waist in the swamp, and alligators are coming at me from all sides.  What are these alligators, in case you are wondering? Well, here is a start.

The Mothership

Our agency business is off to the best start to a year that it has ever been. Normally, January and February are tough, and things break loose by March. But this year, we took off out of the gate like a missile and show no sign of slowing. With 141 associates, we have the best team we have ever had to manage this growth and keep up the pace. It’s back to where the market is tough and the dealers need help, which makes it even more intense. Car dealers are notorious for being alligators, especially when they need traffic.

Dealerships

My new venture of owning a car dealership is a new learning curve every day. But it has proven to be a great way to grow my career and seek out expertise in another field that is closely tied to the one I know the best. While it hasn’t been easy, it is off to a great start. It presents new challenges daily, but we are having a blast. The fun thing about this project is that when my other job ramps down around 5 p.m. and on the weekends, this business ramps up – meaning there is never a dull moment. Alligators also swim after hours and on the weekend.

Housing

I am close to the end of building a house to move my family into and getting ready to sell a house that my family has lived in for over 70 years. We are thrilled to be close on our new house, and somewhat sad to be leaving the old one, but it’s time. We have outgrown it, and just like anything that is 70 years old, it is deciding to start breaking. The prospects of a move coming soon and selling a house are starting to create a lot of alligators.

Housing 2.0

My new neighbor where we are building is on the Homewood City Council. To say she doesn’t like me (or the historical home I tore down) to build my new one is an understatement. I had to fight with the city for the better part of 2 weeks, hire a civil ordinance attorney, and put my project on hold just to get a parking pad. People in Homewood sure love their sidewalks and greenspace. Alligators are also named Jennifer and serve on the city council.

El Rancho

Just as all the land clearing and building of roads, gates, and lakes had been completed, we decided to build a barn. It seemed faster and easier to hire a couple of “good ol’ boys” rather than a construction company that had a backlog for months or years. The “good ol’ boys” couldn’t add or subtract well, so all the measurements were wrong and had to be redone. They ended up getting fired, which left me without a finished barn. Alligators are also country boys who show up in Carhartt’s and worn-out t-shirts, smoke Marlboros, and say “I reckon.”

Air Travel

Even though I have flown millions of airline miles in my career and over 2,500 hours in private aircraft, I have learned more about flying, fixing, and selling airplanes in the last 4 weeks than I have in my 42 years on this earth.  Yeah, I know that sounds like a first-world problem to complain about, but talk about time intensive and stressful. Aviation folks are also alligators – only they wear Raybans.

Kids & Dogs

My homelife is like The Brady Bunch, where instead of 2 families getting blended, we blended 4 kids with 2 dogs. My house is utter chaos. The dogs are fairly low maintenance, only walking in the morning and evening and feeding twice a day. The kids on the other hand are all involved in an activity. Baseball, tee-ball, dance, and ballet. Yep – no two kids could do the same activity. So when I am not traveling, I am spending every night as an Uber driver taking kids from one practice to another. Then there is Ford. He is a 4-year-old animal the likes of which I have never witnessed before. On Sunday he turned on the hose, put it in the grass, turned the backyard into a mud pit, then proceeded to roll in the mud. Alligators are also 4-year-olds named Ford.

So there is my swamp, and those are my alligators. Next time you see me, just smile and say it’s all going to be ok.

One of the goals I made myself for the year was to give “Extra Effort ALL The Time.” As we are now almost two months into the year, I realize a couple of things. First, writing down your goals and looking at them every day is extremely important. And second, you are not going to be good at achieving all your goals. There are just some things that you are naturally better at than others, and I guess that’s why deep down we give ourselves goals so we can improve.

My goal of “Extra Effort ALL The Time” was aimed at a particular phenomenon. Some days, I get so passionate about details and projects. Other days, I just say “oh the hell with it.” But it is a motivating factor that drives me and has my whole career, which is why I care so much about getting things right.

Some people in the past have told me “no matter how good I do, it is never enough for you,” and they are right. I don’t mean that in a bad way. What I mean is that I always feel there is more that can be done, there is something that could be better, or simply a mindset of continuous improvement. It doesn’t fit well for everyone, but it seems to work in my philosophy, so I guess I will keep doing it.

Extra Effort ALL The Time hit me especially hard today, Thursday, February 23. Maybe it had to do with the date 2.23.23, which in itself is kind of cool. But nevertheless, it happened. While it was only a day trip to visit clients in South Georgia and Central Florida, it was going to be a long day with a charity event I was scrambling to get home to that my wife had organized. I woke up at about 3:30 a.m. as I sometimes do. Even though had an alarm set for 5:15 a.m., I couldn’t go back to sleep. As I tossed and turned with thoughts of exhaustion, I also felt hungry because between trying to help with all the shuttling around of kids from different activities the night before, I barely ate dinner.

So there I am, tired and unable to go back to sleep. Hungry with nothing to eat and the thought of an 18-hour day ahead of me. It was really hard to get out of bed, but I did anyway. I got dressed, fed the dog, and went to the airport. Tired as hell I climbed into the airplane and took off. It was nice of the pilot to pick up Chic-Fil-A so very early in the day. I got over the hunger part of the equation, but then I felt my heart start beating fast. Almost to the point where I thought something was wrong. So I closed my eyes – focused on just trying to slow my breathing and then heard the landing gear go down. It was time to land and get the show on the road. I composed myself, even as my phone was blowing up, to get what I needed to handle done before pulling into a parking lot at the very moment my meeting was starting. After opening the car door and walking into the dealership, my reflexes took over and I went on about my day doing my job.

After both cities and flying home, I realized today was a true day of working on my goal of Extra Effort ALL The Time. I didn’t want to go anywhere today, but I did. I didn’t feel like working this hard today, but I did. And sometimes it is just making it through this kind of day that gives you a feeling of winning.

As things get busier throughout the year, I always seem to find less and less time to do things I want to do. There are always new commitments, new projects, and new needs across everything both in my personal life and in my career. But as the job gets busier, I seem to find that, occasionally, it’s time to go hunting.

I’m leaving this afternoon, the sun is out after many days of rain, and the weather has turned cold, so the deer should be moving. I’m taking my kids, who have now found a real sense of loving to hunt, and I’m going to spend the afternoon – when I really should be working – taking time to spend with them doing something that we’ve all really grown to love, and that is hunting.

Now, we may be successful and shoot a big deer. We may not be successful. We may just sit there and freeze. But it will be an afternoon doing something I really enjoy with the people closest to me. Even when the world gets crazy, even when you don’t feel like your head is above water, even when everything doesn’t seem like it will go on without you – remember that sometimes it’s just time to go hunting.

Some people think that I get downright hard to deal with if the year rolls over to a new year. It’s true. January is like a total reset for me, both in business and personally. But the thing I love about January is it reminds me to always emphatically inspect the details. You can make or break your career and your success by getting lost and not paying attention to the details. I was taught from a very early age that you are only as good of a manager as you are a checker. Not to distrust what people give or show you, but to manage your own expectations by checking to ensure everything is being done at the level of accuracy you want.

It bothers some people. Some people don’t like being looked at. They feel that it’s micromanaging. They feel that I’m in their business a little too much. They think, why is he asking me these questions? or does he not trust me? or am I not good enough? That’s simply not it at all. What it has to do with is this: as a reset around every year, I reset and refocus myself, my goals, my priorities, and my aspirations for the year. During that time, I find it almost rewarding to be able to check everything that comes across my way and even ask about things that I’m not day-to-day involved in to make sure they are handled and executed to the best degree possible. You’re only as good of a manager as you are a checker. And when you manage a great deal of projects, people, and personalities, you find yourself checking things all the time.

To start the year, I decided to try something completely new. Business has been great for the past couple of years. My life is chaotic with four kids and a lot of stuff always going on, but everything always just seems to fall into place. In the world we live in, where everything seems to be a disruptor, I decided to disrupt my life a little bit.

Beginning this week, I became a part-owner of a Ford dealership. It may make a lot of sense that in my business that would be a natural tie, but the two things are very separate in how they operate and function. It will require more people, more man-hours, and more of my time. But it gives me such a great sense of excitement to embark on something new when so much other stuff is going on.

I’ve always been a person who thrives on being busy. In fact, if I’m bored or don’t have enough to do, things can sometimes be more chaotic than they need to be. But, making myself vulnerable was something that I really wanted to do. I’m entering into a field that I don’t know, investing a very large amount of money, and putting a lot of trust in my own ability to do more than I’ve ever done before.

Vulnerability is not always seen as a bad thing, in my opinion. When you make yourself vulnerable, you see how much more you’re able to do, how much more you can take on, and even how much more you can simply handle from a mental standpoint. Cheers to 2023, where I’m trying to make myself as vulnerable as I can be.

It is just like in baseball for me, the feeling you get when you are almost finished with the year. Just like a base runner rounds 3^rd base running wide open headed for home, this time of year I get the same feeling. There is so much to do and so little time to do it that you are going as fast as possible, short of breath and just trying to reach the finish line. The end is in sight, but you still have to run as fast as you can to get there.  There is no giving up, slowing down or even dropping your stride in the smallest least bit when it is the end of the 4^th quarter and you are almost to the finish.

For me, running wide open all the time is a passion. (And I don’t mean the act of physically running, for that is one form of workout I cannot stand). But I enjoy the fact that most things in life are nonstop. It doesn’t stress me out when things are flying past you in the moment. In fact, I usually find myself the most stressed and most anxious when there are too few things going on. The thing I love most about my job and what makes it truly the right career for me is the pace – the fast pace. Having never been one to slow down or sit around and wait, I have truly found my calling in life to do what I do. It can be draining, exhausting and downright depressive some days with all the stuff you have to deal with, but there is always a new challenge and a new project to work on. It is also fun to run fast because you can always outrun your mistakes, and I have made a lot of them in my past.  If you go fast enough and try enough new things, then you can outnumber your losses by having a lot of wins and it causes you to think less and less about what you failed at. But by living a life drawn to speed and velocity, you can simply get ahead of just about anything in your way.

Another point about the end of the year being so fast is you are always trying to cram more into a set amount of days than you are at most other times of the year. The days are shorter, and the list of things to do is longer because you are working with a deadline that falls on everyone’s calendar in the last day of the year. It is more hectic and a time of higher anxiety than any other time of the year, even before you add the holidays into the mix.  Then, along with the holidays and the need to be in a lot of different places, you can rev your engine so high that you are at your very limits, only seconds away from blowing up.

Once I get to home base or the finish line, then and only then it is time to rest. Just like a baseball player touches home base then slowly walks into the dugout, that is how it feels to me once you have stopped traveling and hit that time period that is 1-2 days before Christmas. It truly is the greatest time of the year for me with the feeling of the most accomplishment when you have finished the race and can marvel at the fact that you just scored your final time.

The pace is fast, the tension is high and everything is on the line, but that is truly what I enjoy about life this time of year the most.

As I travel around the country exposed to a lot of different dealership owners, I get to see a lot of things. There are many different styles, concepts, strategies, and ideas at play. Usually, I get to walk away from each meeting/visit picking up something new. It truly may be the most rewarding part of my job besides the constant winning that makes it so rewarding.

A lot of times, I see areas of opportunity in most places. There are things that people are not doing for their business that I have seen other people in other places do and become successful because of. That was not the case today in Omaha, Nebraska.

About seven years ago, I got my first assignment in Omaha with a guy who totally took me by surprise. After several calls/discussions on the phone, he seemed to know what he was talking about from a business standpoint, and I had nothing but time on my hands with zero to lose. So, I flew out to Omaha in December to meet him. When I say it was cold, getting off the plane was a whole new kind of cold, something I had never experienced. My bones even felt cold.

Then, to my surprise when I showed up at the meeting, this guy looked like he was barely out of college. I thought to myself, how is this guy going to make a decision to hire us?  Myself being someone who people often think is younger than I actually am, my only way to keep myself positive was to think that I used to be this way. As it turned out, not only did he hire us, but the last seven years together have turned his business into an absolute empire. They have added dealerships, become number-one in their state across almost all brands, built a massive used car operation, and then today he walks me through his new car wash that he is building that, yet again, will be the largest in the state.

As I walked around with my client, now also a friend, I thought about what I might learn from today, and this is it: you can never dream big enough. There are very few people in this world who dream big. Even fewer have enormous dreams. But I saw living proof of it today in Omaha and will encourage everyone I know to always think that way.

There are mornings like this morning where it just seems surreal. I got up early before the sun comes up, got dressed, headed to the airport, and wheels were up at 7:01 a.m. As the sun is rising, so is the plane. I just think about how great our country is where you can have a career or a business and can go anywhere you want and do anything you want to do.

As we kept gaining altitude, I thought about how fun it is to travel to all corners of America. It’s a random Wednesday in September, and I’m headed to the far north Midwest, where I get to go meet new people, talk about the service that my company provides, and experience a whole different lifestyle than the one I have at home.

It’s truly a great thing that I love about what I get to do. Different places, different days, different people, new ideas, new strategies, making things happen, and creating a positive environment. It’s just really one thing that I love about America and what America allows you to do.

It’s not for everyone. Some people get tired of the travel. Some people get tired of the wear and tear, and some just flat-out don’t want to do it. But for me, it’s the only life I know. It’s the only life I really want. And it’s so rewarding at the end of each day to go from city to city, place to place, meeting new people and having new opportunities. To me, that’s what America really is all about.

After taking quite a break from writing on this blog, I spent a lot of time thinking about life: the ups, the downs, the twists, and the turns. And I have come to one very non-profound conclusion: I’m just happy to be here.

The last 60 days have been a lot of fun. There have been a lot of big things happening. There’s been a lot of turmoil. There’s been a lot of ups, there’s been a lot of downs. There’s been the greatest moments of happiness in my life, and some of the greatest moments of sadness. Yet, while all this has happened, it has made me reflect on just being happy being. That’s probably not a very profound statement to a lot of people, but as I continue to go through life, what I seem to find is really a feeling of enjoyment for just living in the moment. Big situations used to scare the hell out of me. Bad things that happen used to frighten me. I used to live some days in fear. But I’ve gotten past it because, with every new thing that happens, each and every day comes as a new opportunity; a new experience. I no longer live with a concern of anything being over my shoulder. In fact, some days I literally feel weightless that nothing makes me uneasy. It’s truly an enjoyment just being here.

As I was flying today, I looked out the window gazing over the earth and wondered how many times? How many times has it happened in my career? There, out the left side window, I saw the Mississippi River and just wondered, how many times have I crossed you?

Maybe it’s because for 150 years very few people ever got a chance to cross it, and the phrase “west of the Mississippi” was such a popular phrase in society. Or it could be because I think back to 2006 when I first went out to Texas alone and signed a rather large account. Better yet, maybe it’s because, regardless of whether I am coming home or going out on a mission, I can look down, see the river, and know exactly where I am at.

Then, my thoughts turn to the many years and millions of miles I have spent flying across the country, and truly wonder how many times I have crossed this amazing piece of geography. Regardless of what thought triggers in my mind, I can merely look out in vast amazement at the twists and turns of such a massive beast and think about how cool and reflective the Mississippi River is of life in general.

Sometimes things go your way…

Sometimes they don’t go your way…

Sometimes you’re cruising down a current…

Sometimes you’re battling the current with all your might…

Sometimes it’s too murky to see your future and what’s out in front…

Sometimes it’s as clear as a bell…

Sometimes you look at it in amazement…

Sometimes you look at it and you are scared to death to cross it…

Regardless of how you look at things on any certain day, no matter how many times, I fly over the mighty Mississippi and think about something.