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Jackson Hole lessons
I’m having a difficult time restarting this morning after spending a wonderful weekend in Jackson Hole with my wife. We spent the whole time relaxing and having fun. I couldn’t have asked for a better time! Here are a couple of takeaways from this weekend…
Have fun in business
On Friday morning Liz and I headed to Mad River Whitewater Rafting for an eight mile trip down the Snake River. We were put with an LDS young adults ward from the Ogden area. They were a fun group and they provide lots of laughs (I’m so glad I’m not single!). The trip was great except for one thing: the river guides. Our river guide seemed genuinely annoyed at us. She barked orders like a drill sergeant. She rolled her eyes - a lot. She snarked off to one of the passengers (read: CUSTOMER) who was simply dangling her foot off the side of the boat. When someone asked her how long she had been guiding she tried to pull the old ”Holiday Inn Express” joke in the most monotone drill sergeant voice she could pull off. No one laughed. After a while I noticed people slowly ignoring our guide more and more. Â
Business is supposed to be fun. Businesses operating in the ”fun” business (like white water rafting outfits) are really supposed to be fun. This guide failed to realize that we had paid $45 each for fun. When we didn’t get it out of the guide we made it fun for ourselves. What I experienced there is what I call the “climbing shop syndrome”. Ever been in a climbing shop? I mean a real specialized non-chain climbing shop? Unless they can sense that you are some kind of hard core climber then don’t expect to get much service. As a matter of fact you should expect to get “what are you doing in here?” looks. It was apparent to me that our river guide is a hard core white water enthusiast. She had the whole “climb shop syndrome” going on as she guided us city slickers down the river. Oh, bother.Â
Do you have experts guiding customers in your business? Beware of the climb shop syndrome. Â Â Â Â
Internet break
In my line of work I spend most of the day online. Heading out on vacation made me realize that I spend too much time online. I jumped online on Friday night to catch up on things. A couple of hours later I remembered that I was on vacation and shut down. I blogged at the beginning of summer that I was going to pull back from blogging. For a long time I was posting about once a week. Now, I’m back to posting several times per week. So I need to get back in the mode of posting about once per week or even less. My traffic has dropped off a lot this summer but who cares. I seem to get in more trouble blogging than I do not blogging. So I’m better off just posting every so often.  Â
Let it ride!
Lately I’ve been very keyed up about work and other projects. Over the course of the trip it occurred to me that I need to just let things ride. I feel good about my direction and I feel good about the things I’m working on. Sometimes I need to remember that God is at the wheel and I’m really just along for the ride. So I’ve come to realize that I can’t control every aspect in my life. More important than realizing that is accepting it. Now I just need to role with it.
All in all life is good and look forward to great things in the near future.
Update: Here are some Jackson Hole pictures I just upload to Flickr.