CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

TRAVELING

For my 40th birthday a few years back, my team gave me a poster from FlightMemory.com that plotted all of my air travel for a full 12-month period on a world map: 34 airports, 90 flights, 157,000 miles. While it was entertaining to know that I circumnavigated the globe 6.3 times that year—and while I am not immune to the perks of getting upgraded for being a frequent flier—that was a very sobering moment!

Business travel is inevitable. I've done a ton of it throughout my career no matter what job I've had. The reality is that no matter how connected the world is, sometimes there's no substitute for showing up for something in person. As CEO, you need to do a lot of this. Even if your company is 100 percent in one location, you are your company's main ambassador, which means you need to be out of the office and meeting with customers, partners, suppliers, and speaking at industry events regularly. All of those are likely to involve some degree of travel, even in the most local of businesses.

SEALING THE DEAL WITH A HANDSHAKE

While you have to watch expenses, sometimes it's worth traveling 5,000 miles for a five-minute meeting. I relearned this lesson a few years back: We were negotiating a big deal with a company on the West Coast and we were at a tense and critical spot in the negotiations. I knew that the only way to move the deal forward to a handshake and a term sheet was to meet face-to-face with the decision makers on the other side of the table, in person. So, I got on a plane. It wasn't my first choice of activities: the trip was a long way to go for a really short meeting. It was 100 percent worthwhile, with a very specific mission accomplished.

It's important to be present and accounted for in business settings and with everyone's busy schedules and increasingly frenzied and multitasking office environments, it's harder than ever to really get someone's attention. There's just no substitute for looking someone in the eye and doing a real handshake, not a virtual one. Of course, you can't travel all the time, so learning how to say “no” to a potential trip, even if it's a client visit or speaking engagement, is important. There's no formula for this but when you start to know flight attendants on a first-name basis, that's a good sign that it's time to cut back.

MAKING THE MOST OF TRAVEL TIME

In addition to the mission you're traveling for, there are ancillary benefits to being on the road. There are four things I try to take advantage of while traveling:

1. Time for project work. If your day is anything like mine, it's pretty full of meetings and interruptions. Once in a while, you have some actual work that you have to do, whether it's writing a new investor presentation, mapping out your game plan for next year, thinking through a tough strategic question, reviewing massive amounts of material—or writing chapters of a book about being a startup CEO. Long-form travel time is a great opportunity for this kind of work.
2. Time with a colleague. One thing I've always appreciated in my career but have grown even more attached to of late, is traveling with colleagues. Any time I have an opportunity to do so, I jump on it. First, I find that I get solid work time in with a colleague in transit: it's a check-in meeting that isn't rushed with a hard stop, interrupted by the phone or visitors and in person. Second, I find that I get more creative work time in with a colleague on a flight, especially a long one. Some of the time that isn't in a structured meeting invariably turns to brainstorming or more idle work chatter. Some great ideas have come out of flights I've taken in the past 13 years! Finally, my colleague and I get more social time than usual on a plane. Social time is an incredibly important part of managing and developing personal connections with employees. Time spent next to each other in the air, in an airport security line or lounge or in a rental car always lends itself to learning more about what's going on in someone's life. Don't get me wrong: even when I travel with someone from Return Path, we each have some quiet time to read, work, sleep and contemplate life. The work and work-related aspects of the experience are not to be ignored.
3. Time for myself. You can see that I value staying fresh, which I do by a combination of taking time for myself and pursuing hobbies outside of work. Depending on your Operating System, you can make business travel time a time for this. A few hours of relatively undisturbed time on a plane can be just enough time to watch the Star Wars trilogy on your iPad, read three Harlan Coben novels or catch up on sleep.
4. Time to be out of touch. This is the flip side of “time for myself,” meaning that sometimes it's okay, even good, to be a bit out of touch. When you're out of sight, sometimes people at work bother you less. Particularly with international travel, people don't seem to want to call: you're a larger number of time zones off, so people just don't think to reach out. Even if I'm doing email once or twice a day when time permits, it's different than being on top of every little thing at the office. It's a good thing to be out of touch a bit when you're not officially unplugged for a vacation. Your company will be fine.

STAYING DISCIPLINED ON THE ROAD

When you travel as much as I do, you can't lean on the excuse that you're out of town and therefore off the hook when it comes to personal discipline. In terms of managing myself while I'm on the road, I also have a few simple rules that I try to stick to, no matter what.

• I take care of myself. I get good sleep. In the winter, I take Airborne when I'm flying, which I've found cuts down on getting colds from my fellow passengers. I stick to my exercise routine religiously. It helps reduce jetlag, plus I have more time to exercise when I'm on the road. I am not picky about hotels and try to stay at places that are inexpensive but I have one solid rule, which is that there has to be a good, and preferably 24-hour, hotel gym. Sometimes I try running outside, which can be a nice way to see another place but I hate running in the dark in a strange city, so that doesn't always work. I've also developed a couple of exercise routines that I can do even in a small hotel room: push-ups, sit-ups, Pilates. Bringing along Xertubes (www.spri.com) allows me to do a 15- to 30-minute strength workout in a hotel room at any time of day, often without needing to bring along much in the way of workout clothes or shoes.
• I squeeze every minute out of each day. Being home comes with lots of things to do: Commuting. Time with family. Down time in front of a screen. Those things can evaporate when you're on the road. On the road, you can work 15 hours per day, get in a good dinner, enough sleep and exercise. Some of my most productive and simultaneously most “me” times are on business trips as a result of squeezing every minute out of the day.
• I find time to take some little bit of joy in wherever I am. Dinners out, whether alone or (more likely) with colleagues or clients, are a minimum. For international travel, that's particularly tasty but unless you're doing a lot of travel to Peoria (sorry, Peoria), there's probably some great local cuisine to seek out. Especially with international travel, I also try to block out at least a couple of hours to see some local sights. That doesn't always work out but if I've never been to that city or country before, I make an extra effort. I once hired a taxi to give a colleague and me a rapid-fire tour of Istanbul, and another time a colleague and I who were in Copenhagen took a cab over the bridge to Malmo, Sweden, for a cup of coffee because neither of us had ever been to Sweden before. Hardly a substitute for a vacation, but it was better than nothing.