Tag Archives: People

Traveling for Work

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airportBecause I’ve recently moved into management in my day job, I have to travel a little bit to some of our branch offices.  I know quite a few people who travel a lot in the IT industry for work and travel far more than I do.  So much they’ve received super elite status with airlines like Air Canada.  That’s a lot of flying, try 100,000 miles or 95 segments. CRAZY!  Thankfully I don’t have to travel that much and may only reach the “prestige” level.  Not that I’m counting…

Anyway I’m thankful that I am in control of when I fly out and can work our family schedule around it so that I don’t inconvenience my family when I’m away and also so we can keep our options open for building our business in the evenings.  There is a silver lining though to my traveling and that is getting out and meeting new people with the possibility of having business at a distance.  One of our goals is to have a distance leg this year so that we can expand our business into another city.  While building business in Edmonton is awesome and we are ever so thankful that we have a kick butt team there, we wouldn’t mind expanding into British Columbia as we eventually want to move out there to the Kelowna area. 

When travelling you’d be surprised at how many people you meet and how open they are to talking.  When on the plane try talking to the person beside you (if they are open to it) and just strike up a conversation.  You never know where that conversation may lead to.  I’m not saying you need to try and “prospect” the person sitting beside you but having a casual conversation with the person next to you helps pass the time and also you’ve met someone new.  I love that about this business, it allows you to stretch your comfort zone (if you have issues with talking to people) and allows you to geniunly have conversations with strangers you may not have had before. 

With that I think more people could be more friendly especially with the way the world is going these days.  Anyway my plane is here and they are calling of boarding. 

If you travel for business, safe travels!

Love Meeting New People

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meeting_new_people This evening we attended my best buddies 30th birthday, Rafal over at http://www.e-rafal.com/. Rafal and I have known each other since we attended NAIT back in 1999 for Computer Systems Technology.  We’ve had so many great memories and adventures and I know the next 30 will be filled with new memories and adventures and cannot wait to experience them with Rafal.

At the party we expected to see the same set of friends however were surprised when we saw a few people we did not know.  Since we started building our own business we’ve really become a lot better at meeting new people and just getting to know them for no other reason then getting to know new people.  I think this has to be my favorite part of this business we are building and what its taught us…getting to know people.  I love listening to what people have to say, where they have come from, where they are going, what kind of goals they have in life and whatever else comes up.  I know the types of conversations we have these days are more then just “so what did you get up to this weekend”.  Conversations we have with people are non-superficial, we actually want to connect with people and in turn they want to connect with us.  They want to know what we are about just as much as we do to them.

I think some people may misunderstand our intentions when they see us talking to new people and that’s a shame.  Just because those people want to talk about their favorite drink or what they did last weekend is no reason to look down on us for wanting to get to know new people on a more deeper level.  I’ve said before that one of our main goals in life is to impact people in a positive way.  Also like John Maxwell says:

“Want to impress others? Talk about your successes. Want to impact others? Talk about your failures.”

Meeting new people is such a great thing.  When was the last time you had a great meaningful conversation with someone new?