She looked “rode hard” — and well on the way to being road-hardened — as she slumped into the seat next to mine, another airport meal in tow.
Because of a flight delay, she’d missed her connection and was waiting stand-by to hopefully board the flight from Atlanta to Raleigh-Durham.
Rachel told me that she is on the road 3-5 days each week in sales for a fast-growing technology company. The money is good enough to keep her tied to it, she said, but the glamour of travel is long gone.
Her life for the foreseeable future looks like a long, hellish journey schlepping through airports, traveling to myriad trade shows and presentations, one after another then back again.
As we chatted, I asked what she wanted to do. She said she and her husband were dreaming and hoping for the “big idea” that would rocket them to riches.
I said that most of the obvious big ideas started out as not-so-obvious small ideas and a helluva lotta hard work.
She said half dreamily that if they could just find that one big idea they could be rich and not have to work like that.
The irony for me was that we were returning from the World Domination Summit in Portland, OR, where we’d just listened to dozens of stories from speakers and attendees alike who’d been in financial places less fortunate than Rachel’s, but who had taken insane ideas and worked their butts off to build their own success in the process.
Each of them was committed to the hard work of bringing focused action to bear on their ideas in addition to dreaming big.
We hear so many “overnight success” stories that lead many people to believe that the secret is simply finding the right idea, buying the appropriate domain, and sitting back while the online sales rack up.
Too few talk about the grinding work, broken relationships, and multiple failures that seem to accompany the overnight miracles. Or when they do, maybe it’s just that very few listen.
A couple of nuggets I’ve picked up that have resonated with my experience through the years:
• Take consistent, ninja-focused action in your work.
• Spend less high-energy time on social media.
• Put people over profits.
• Failure is an integral part of the process of succeeding.
• Be willing to take imperfect action.
But one of my favorite morsels of advice, and quite appropriate to my airport conversation, came from New York Times best-selling author A.J. Jacobs at this year’s World Domination Summit: “It’s easier to act your way into new thinking than it is to think your way into new action.”
But, of course, that’s easier said than done…
~ Charles