As I write this on a Thursday night in a hotel room in South Texas, I think back over the week and all that has transpired. There was the enormous feeling of watching my girls go to school on Monday. Lilly Grace started the 2^nd grade and Anne Charlotte started her first day of kindergarten. I was so proud to be there and walk them into school and take them to their classes where they will enter a whole new world for the next 9 months, and think about all the things they will learn and people they will meet. 

No sooner than I leave the parking lot with Amy and the boys to get ready for work my phone is already ringing, text messages are coming in, and a client is asking me why an update to his website he asked for on Friday hasn’t already been made. I stop.  Take a deep breath, and my world goes into perspective. The busier you become and more that you are needed, the more you have to be able to compartmentalize life and take care of the precious moments that you have in front of you. The greatest asset that anyone has in this world is TIME. It is limited, and it is something that you cannot create more of – no matter how much money you have.

Time marched on for Anne Charlotte this week.  On Sunday, she was “excited but kind of scared about starting school.” And now, 4 days in, she loves every minute of it. She will never go back in time to remember the girl who was scared on Sunday when we went for a ride in my car and she confided in her dad that she really didn’t know what school would entail.

Time marched on for Lilly Grace this week. She started the second grade… I remember the day we found out we were pregnant with her, and the whole world changed. When she was born, when she first talked, and now when she goes to her classroom, her friends wait for her and wonder, why are her parents are dropping her off?  She was so tiny but has now become so mighty.  She is growing day by day and the time just doesn’t stop.

Time marched on for our family, as there are people entering our lives and people exiting our lives and you just can’t hold back change. One thing I have never been afraid of is change. It used to scare me in thinking change may cost me my business, but now, with the fangs of a wolf, all change does is make me look for what else I can capture as prey. If it sounds vicious, then you are probably right. But I have learned that change will happen whether you want it or not, and time will definitely march on.

It can be very tough to maintain a positive mental attitude (PMA) when you sometimes feel yourself slipping into dark areas surrounded by troubles and nonstop issues. Just when you think you have everything under control and life is happening as it is supposed to, you get dealt a whole new set of challenges that you may feel like you cannot overcome. This is when it is more necessary than ever to have a positive outlook on everything around you. This is a time when you have to not get bogged down in the problems of the world around you but find a way to open your mind and see past them.

Recently, I have struggled to keep a positive mental attitude that has been spurred on by a work-related issue.  On-the-job performance has never been a challenge for me and really isn’t for those who work closely around me. But, an unusual set of circumstances over the last month in regard to one specific area of my work has become a source of daily, sometimes hourly, torment. While it’s not anything that I am not used to dealing with in our industry, the source and severity of this particular case has been rather surprising. It had me weighted down mentally pretty badly until the words of a close friend reminded me that there isn’t anything so important that it can change your entire outlook on the world around you. There’s not a client, not an employee, not an issue that you can’t find a way to get yourself around if you have a positive mental outlook on things around you. 

Once I heard these words from my friend, it immediately made me feel better and realize that he was right. There was nothing to take so seriously that you let it crush your spirit or stop your mission in life as being a positive force to all things around you.

It is easy to get down. Get down on yourself mentally, get down on those around you or simply just have a down spirit. But, I have never accomplished anything while having a downward trend, and it is a good reminder that while you will have highs and lows in life, this too shall pass.

The final program that I attended at Harvard Business School was on How to Transform Customer Experiences.

Over the last couple of months while traveling and reading, I have focused heavily on identifying things that can be done that will transform how our customers see doing business with our company. I have created this list and explanations of such.

1. Recognize that excellence is in the eye of the customer – You only truly excel in customer service if that is how the customer sees you. You can think you are great, but unless they do, then you really aren’t living up to the level of excellence that they need.
2. Create a culture of employee loyalty –The best way to create excellence for customers is to have employees that believe in putting the company first. To be able to deliver for the customer, you have to have a team that enables the company to perform at an optimal level.
3. Know what creates a “Wow Experience” – This can be the smallest thing or the biggest thing, but be a creator of WOW. Something as simple as answering an email late at night or over the weekend, or simply doing something outside of your job description can make someone say WOW.
4. Create a learning environment – Mistakes will happen, but your key to success is how fast you recover from them and what you learn. Realize that you would rather get a speeding ticket than a parking ticket in a fast-moving company, and learn from every mistake that you make.
5. Focus on the LVC – Lifetime Value of a Customer – Every customer journey you embark on will have its good days and its bad days. Budgets will get added and will get evaporated. Don’t focus on today, but focus on the lifetime value of working with that customer.
6. Become an “owner of the business” – Just as one of our core values states. We are all owners of the business. Having mental ownership over an account and a process will make it matter more to you and you will deliver a better level of service for that customer.
7. Be a provider of service excellence – While we are a merchandising company, we are still in the service industry. Make it a top priority to deliver service excellence to the customer in everything you do. It’s not the will to win that makes winners, it’s the will to prepare to win that creates winners. And when you are winning, you are creating excellence.
8. Build a talent management system – Nobody can learn or be effective without training. Nobody likes to take time to train. But it is the most necessary piece to continuous improvement that exists. You have to take time to train on areas that you want to be better at, and this will develop your talent as a deliverer of great customer service.
9. Give employees license – Empowerment to do what’s right for the customer. We can get very tied up on deadlines, rules and procedures as a company, and in no way is this a license to go break all the rules. But have a mindset that the customer is first and we need to view things as what is most effective for them above all other rules.
10. Be best in class at what matters – We do one thing, and our only mission in the universe is to do it better than anyone else: be the best in class for our customers at what matters.

It is easy after you get really comfortable at doing something to forget why you do it.  Your natural senses and systematic mental processes take over, and you just do things automatically.

This is a simple list I created that explains the best way to both handle an account and to handle yourself to be better at handling that account.

Know the Dealer

• Know the account history of the account you are engaging
• Know key areas of geography they sell
• Know their sales volume and what is the best-selling car
• Know key managers and what they like/dislike
• Know who the competitors are and who they want to beat
• Know any “highs and lows” with the account
• Know what co-op/compliance standards are for the brand
• Know what has worked the best in the past
• Know the best time/way to get in touch with this client
• Know if you need more resources before entering the meeting

Staying Focused

• Keep your list updated at all times (I start mine daily)
• Keep enough small task you can mark off for mental achievement
• Keep track of who you give thanks to and thank someone daily
• Keep a mental list of not only today but next week
• Know what are the hottest items and order of importance
• Set times to tasks so you don’t get bogged down
• Return all emails within a few hours of receiving
• Keep calls as short as possible (both internal and external – everyone is busy) JPS – :90 call goal, 5 & 10 minute call goal
• Watching your screen and responding to an email immediately disrupts your flow of work
• Do not check your email immediately prior to walking into a meeting or during a conference call. Focus should be given to the task at hand and not what is happening 1,000 miles away

Prospects List

• Keep an accurate list of any prospects you possibly have
• Ask a well-performing dealer for a potential prospect
• Contact top prospects on a monthly basis
• Be a source for information and not just to sell something
• When people leave for a new job, follow them as they will need your help in the future

After taking a very nice relaxing week off last week, I came home Sunday night only to pack my bags and hit the road again for the week. I’ll have to admit that, even for me, it was an aggressive mission. Five days on the road covering states in the following order: Alabama, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Tennessee, Arkansas, Georgia and Florida. Somewhere, even in my deep, twisted, never-going-to-stop mentality, this still seemed like a little bit of a stretch. My travel partner on this trip was Stan Long, and as we ended day four, we both noted that we really weren’t that tired, even though every day had been a very early start and we have traveled/worked until late at night almost every night. 

It could be because I am still so fresh coming off of vacation, or because I have really made it a point since coming back from vacation to smile more. After taking a few hard looks at myself in the mirror while being out, thinking about my future, the speed I work at, and the time I spend with Amy and the kids, it became very clear that every time I looked in the mirror I wasn’t smiling.

My dad used to always say that life is like a mirror; when you smile in it, it smiles back at you. And I thought to myself that for the second half of the year I would try to do a whole lot more smiling. Even though some things have gone my way this week and others have been huge disappointments, it has been easier to handle all along with a big smile. 

I’m back on my diet, at least most days of the week. I’ve been watching less TV and reading a whole lot more while being on the road. And I have made it a point to be delightful to everyone that I have come into contact with. They say smiles are contagious and I hope it’s so. 

Sometimes I wish I had done what my mother said when I was a little kid and continued to take piano lessons and actively play the piano. The six years of piano were never a lot of fun, but I found that I did have talent and progressed my way up to be somewhat accomplished until my teenage years. Then it all came to an end when I got my first guitar when I was 14, and the piano became a thing of the past. The guitar suited me well through high school and college. I was a hit at college parties and the front porch of the fraternity house because of the sounds and lyrics that I would make up on the spot that usually were funny to the point of everyone laughing hysterically. Leaves not to wonder where my creative side comes from. But after college, with the arrival of a new job and setting my bar very high to have a great career, the guitar soon became a thing of the past.  Which brings me to present day…

When presenting to clients or pitching for new business, you feel like you are on stage, and it’s reminiscent of my days playing a musical instrument. Yet, sometimes when you are up there, you look into people’s faces and they give you a look back like they are staring into the abyss. There is no emotion, usually very little cheering and almost never anyone laughing hysterically. Sometimes, the room can be as sterile-feeling as an operating room in a hospital, but you absolutely press on to continue delivering your message with no buzz or reaction from the crowd. That is the main time when I say to myself, “damnit – should have been a rock star.” 

Trying to read people’s faces in a crowded room is kind of like an art form and hasn’t been made any easier by those who like to occasionally look at their cell phones to check an email or text while you are giving a presentation or a pitch. One can only hope that they are excited enough and making enough sense of the topic that you can keep someone’s attention and carry the room, although it is not always possible.

Yet, it seems like every day I go to work I find myself standing in a room somewhere (either in my office or out on the road), and it’s a mere attempt at trying to read people’s faces. It kind of makes you appreciate the ones who stand up midway through a presentation and either adamantly agree with your points or flat out tell you that you suck.

In a world where there is not really much of a break in a work/life balance for some people, it is always good to find a day or two to take a breather. With email/text and the demands of customers never seeming to cease, you can wear yourself to the point of exhaustion and find that you keep on going for many days and weeks on end.

With so little balance, you need to find time for yourself and those that you really enjoy spending time with. That is why I am typing this on a plane flying to a tropical island where I will spend a couple of days with my wife just resting and relaxing. Yeah, my email is on, and I am cleaning up some details as we fly south. But coming very soon, there will be many moments in the next three days for rest, relaxation and reflection.

I don’t always find a way to have a great balance. But when I do, it is cherished and enjoyed in every way.

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.

With the recent acquisition of a large piece of business, a friend of mine who is outside of the business said: “Man, that’s really great news that you won that account – I bet you can sit back and cruise for a little while, right?” Obviously, I said “friend of mine” not “close friend of mine” because that is hardly how I operate and the exact opposite of what I find myself doing right now.

Times like these are exciting, scary, fun, filled with doubt and all the while filled with moments of absolute panic wondering how am I going to get everything done that I have to do? But somehow, it always works itself out for those who work their ass off. I have flown more places and traveled more miles this month than any that I can recall. While traveling 15 days in a month is something I have done many times before, this time it is more intense because most every place that I am going is a new city, new client and I’m usually trying to fit meetings in two or three different cities into a day.  For me, this is a whole new pace and while it brings you to the point of exhaustion sometimes, I am truly enjoying it and learning that you can push yourself even harder than you thought you could in the past. 

So, what’s the trick? How can you pull this off and not be going absolutely crazy trying to work 18 hours a day, six days a week and feeling like you will have a panic attack if you aren’t checking your phone every few minutes?  Easy… “Keep Calm – AND WORK YOUR ASS OFF!” 

Keeping calm is the common denominator to my otherwise insane world.  Not to mention the challenge of trying to juggle being home for my kids as much as I can, and working to help grow the company as much as I can. I find it all is a whole lot easier when just staying calm. Some people who know me and read this might say: “Well he is anything but calm.” But that simply isn’t the case. Sure, I will get fired up over what I think are senseless issues, and yes, I move around and act with a sense of energy and urgency – but all in all, I have a very calm sense over me and my thinking most of the time.

I have grown to have tremendous respect for seeing insurmountable tasks, and somehow managing to accomplish them. This started out very early in my career, and it seems that every time a new period like this hits, I can somehow navigate my way through it better. It’s not that I am addicted to trying to find challenges and obstacles that will drive everyone around me to insanity! I would argue that these challenges and obstacles seem to have a way of finding me. Maybe what I enjoy about navigating through these times is seeing how the people around me are able to grow and thrive during these times. I look at those who can easily manage the stress and feelings of different emotions almost every minute of the day all while having a smile on their face and I see a lot of myself in these individuals. 

Having a mindset and mental toughness for mountains of work is not for everybody, but I sure love the hell out of it and continue to try and be better with each obstacle as it comes my way.

After some recent time of reflection, I am starting to view my career as a roller coaster ride. There are a lot of ups, downs, twists, turns, the occasional screaming and everything is moving very fast. Now, if you’re someone who works with me, you are probably nodding your head right now saying, “that’s the truth.” But the more I think about it, the more things do always seem to follow the path of a roller coaster, and you are the sole person responsible for how fast you are going to go. Careers are like very long timelines where you grow to be able to take on more and more the longer you progress. But even though they look horizontal when written out on a page, there is a lot of vertical action in them as they go up and down.

Even though I never played dominoes when I was a kid, I did always enjoy laying on the floor with a box of dominoes, setting them up in a long and twisty line, and flicking my finger so that I could knock them all down right in a row. Something about seeing how fast they would all fall down after all that work was nothing short of mesmerizing and something I would do over and over again just to watch them fall. The part about dominoes that was so cool is how you have one block hitting the other and creating a continuous action over and over until they are all knocked down.  

Most people probably don’t summarize their work life with things like roller coasters and dominoes, but then again, most people aren’t in automotive marketing, either, so I guess it comes with the territory. I use the roller coaster to remind myself there are ups and downs just like there are good days and bad days. And then there is always the occasional screaming when you are scared half to death. But just like a roller coaster, the track always leads the cars back to the station where you can get on or off.

I think now the reason I still think back to my days of dominoes with such a fond memory is because that is how I try to set up my days in any given week. I’m the type of person who puts so much on my daily task list that there is probably no way I can ever get it all done. But it’s the allure of trying to bite off more than you can chew that keeps me doing it on a daily basis.  But when things get busy and stuff starts happening, I get excited because marking things off my list can be like me setting up a whole set of dominoes on the floor and then knocking them all down. Just a flick of the finger and the blocks start to fall just like when you start making calls and creating action; the dominoes all start to fall. The only problem I run into is that sometimes I need a bigger set of dominoes.