Relationships Are Built Face to Face

I'm writing this while flying home after a few more days on the road. This time, my travel took me to San Antonio for an event.

If you've never traveled for work, then you've only glamorized it from a distance. Let me tell you something: travel for work is not for the faint of heart.

But if you're going to create something, grow something, expand, or create anything of value, getting on the road, in front of the customers, creating relationships, fumbling through pitches, is the only way to actually make it work.

This remote work stuff is cute and everything, but real deals are still done face to face.

I joined this company two months ago, which means I'm still learning the products, the people, the players in the industry, the competitors, and more. I'll tell you, nobody loves a trade show, a conference, or an event. It's not fun to go hang around with people for a few days when you'd rather be sitting behind your Zoom screen in the comfort of your own home in sweatpants.

But I've learned more by being on the road for 7 nights these last few weeks than I ever would have learned reading through PDF's and scrolling through an LMS.

Something different happens when you are standing across from a customer and they tell you what they actually think. You can hear the hesitation in their voice. You can see when they light up about something. You can watch them get confused when you explain a feature that you thought was crystal clear. You can't get all of that from a dashboard.

You also learn really quickly where your story is weak. You think you have the perfect pitch until you say it ten times in front of ten different people and realize half of them are staring back at you like you just explained quantum physics. That is where the learning happens. You adjust. You simplify. You get better. By the end of the event, you sound completely different than you did on day one.

The same thing happens with relationships. People remember the conversation at dinner. They remember the random fifteen minutes you spent talking in the hallway. They remember laughing about something over a drink after the event. Relationships are still built in the little moments, and those little moments are really hard to manufacture through a scheduled thirty-minute Zoom meeting.

There is also something important about getting out of your own little corporate bubble. When you sit at home every day, it's easy to convince yourself you understand the market. Then you get out there and actually talk to people, and you realize customers are thinking about completely different things than you assumed. Competitors are doing things you didn't know about. The industry is moving in directions that haven't made it into your internal strategy deck yet.

That doesn't mean we all need to be on airplanes every week. I love being home. I love sleeping in my own bed. I love not eating airport food and trying to figure out which terminal has the least depressing dinner option. But there is a time to sit behind the screen, and there is a time to get out into the world and actually see what is happening.

If you're trying to build something meaningful, eventually you have to get uncomfortable. You have to get on the plane. You have to shake some hands. You have to have a few awkward conversations, give a few bad pitches, learn the room, and figure things out in real time. Growth rarely happens from the comfort of your sweatpants. Sometimes, you just have to get on the road.

Growth rarely happens from the comfort of your sweatpants.

I know I've written about this before, but it can change how you operate if you take it seriously.