Blast Off! - Business Process Lessons Learned From Vacation

You can see from the picture below that August was a BLAST!

That’s me “flyboarding” on Big Bear Lake. A company called Action Aqua Flight makes this super fun experience possible.

During the month of August, I took a week and two days of vacation. I had the great fortune to spend a few days in the mountains with my wife, kids, and grandbaby just hanging out and having fun.

The following week, a group of 16 guys went to Colorado to ride dirt bikes for a week. It was my first time on the trip, but some of the guys had been 15 times! The week of dirt bike riding was HARD. The terrain in Colorado consists of rocks, trees, tree roots, mud, water, and high-altitude climbs. At 11,500 feet, you are winded and tired just going from the campsite to the trailer – never mind lugging your motorcycle around and riding for 5 or 6 hours! 

During the first few days, I hated the whole riding experience. I was sore, hungry, exhausted, and not having any fun. But after the fourth day, I was having a ton of fun and I was much less tired.

It’s funny how the new experiences I had in August relate to what's happening in the business environment. Sometimes we know what we need to do in business, but we have never experienced the specific process that needs to be done to implement change or make our businesses better.

Learning from August has helped me see that most of the time the first attempt you make at a challenge may result in failure or less-than-perfect results. But we don’t stop trying – we try again and hopefully change our process and get better results. By the time we put our best effort into business process, the results are good and we actually have fun doing it! AWESOME!

Have a great September!

Marty