If one likes to enjoy life and be filled with wonder, it helps to be easily amused. I am easily amused. What I will write about today has certainly happened before. But it continues to amaze me.
In the post-career, all-consuming, transitioned state of my life, work has taken on a different role as I have frequently mentioned. It serves to keep me connected to the world that is younger than me. It gives me pleasure when I use my well-honed skills - both for the sheer enjoyment of using them and because of the good it does. AND quite important, it funds our lavish travel lifestyle.
And I have written often how I will drift in and out of the intensity of working based upon what else is going on that has my attention or my energy level. And if money is not a pressing need, I will certainly have a tendency to coast. Inevitably what results from this lack of focus is the dreaded slow period where money stops coming in. That leads to the equally dreaded being called on the carpet by the CEO of de-I Enterprises...WIFE. This will look and sound something like this...
"de-I, we only have $X in the bank account. And we have no accounts receivable to speak of. AND you are running around spending all this time and money in Ghana..."
It usually ends like that...with this unarticulated indication of imminent doom to he who is supposed to be bringing income to support the travel spending addiction. And I must say when I look at it from a management technique standpoint, it is quite effective. Because I will usually get my sorry ass in gear and get out hustling.
Now here is where the easily amused part comes in. I have spent close to 3 decades building a selling system based on networking and referral selling. It takes a long time to build such a network. It's like having a long, long pipeline. It takes a long time to fill it. But once it is filled, anything you put in it on one end produces results on the other end. So it is with my 'pipeline', my 'network'. At this point, the decades of work building a reputation, a ton of contacts, a world of reciprocity based on things I've done for others, I can be away for months but I come back, start calling people, setting up meetings and literally within weeks even days sometimes results start flowing.
I never cease to be amazed.
2 comments:
that is pretty amazing!!!!! Bet you could write a biz book about it and no one would be able to decry it for 30 years until they could prove it didn't work. Since most of those books don't work, I think it won't matter to most readers anyways.
I'm a pretty productive person, but I bet I'd be AMAZING if I had wife CEO to motivate me.
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