Cincinnati a Gogo: Why Traveling Can Help Your Career

People asked me, “Why do you travel so much?” After all, I have been known to travel up to 42 weeks in a calendar year. That’s a lot, even for me. Even now that I’ve found balance, I’m still traveling around every other week or so, maybe a tad more.
So why is the tech guy that conceivably could give every single speech and workshop in his life wearing shorts and sandals in San Diego traveling so much?

The answer is pretty straightforward. Meeting people. Seeing them, feeling them, studying them, being energized by them and energizing them in exchange. After a while of doing this, you start getting some interesting dynamics.

Take my last workshops in Cincinnati, OH. I recently had the pleasure of giving 2 workshops to CEOs in that area. At each workshop, one attendee had heard me give the keynote speech at the Association for Manufacturing Technology’s annual congress. The funny thing is that one heard me in Orlando 3 years ago while the other one heard me in Cleveland last year. Same association, different year. What are the odds?

And both were looking forward to the upcoming workshop because they know I keep my content fresh and relevant.

Naturally I asked them at the end of the workshop whether I had delivered new, engaging content. They both gave a resounding yes. Not only that, but they really appreciated the workshops, because we had time to go much deeper into social media, much deeper into online collaboration, much deeper into the life-work balance…

Ironically I get paid so much more for an hour or less of a keynote speech than a 3-hour workshop. And it is much less draining to speak in front of 300 to 1,000 people then to animate a 3-and-a half-hour workshop full of questions and requests.

So the initial question is coming back. Why not just do a few more keynotes every year and stop the workshops? Because I get so much more feedback during the workshops, and they make me so much better at my job.

So yeah, that’s why I travel.

2446 views