The Eye of the Tiger

I've spent 11 years of my careers at one of the leading sales effectiveness consulting companies in the world; a small company with a big impact in its marketplace and a highly-skilled team of which I am proud to be a part.  For most of my career,  I have been involved in development of customized training programs for our clients, but about a year ago, I moved into a specialized sales support role.

This week was my company's second national sales meeting of the year, and I came to it feeling like I needed to prove myself.  In our previous national sales meeting, in Boca Raton in January, I had been responsible for a portion of the meeting that, to put it mildly, was not well-received. I had written a series of training activities for our own sales force that very accurately mirrored their real-life client situations, but were judged to be very similar in focus to previous years' activities and not a good use of time.

At this Summers' meeting, I was asked to co-deliver a presentation introducing four new solutions. Although I have built credibility through my client and internal work, I felt like it was important for me to make a good presentation, especially with our new CEO; my new supervisor; a previous supervisor who has been a trusted mentor to me for many years; and of course our whole sales force present.

My problem?  Although I collaborate extensively with clients over the phone and less frequently in person but enough to be very confident, but I had somehow never had to deliver a PowerPoint presentation to a live audience, despite being almost 40 years old and having worked in the sales performance consulting world for 11 years with a 5-year "break" in the middle of that in knowledge management and sales support at a very large management and technology consulting firm, and I was definitely feeling out of my comfort zone.

I had a 9:00am presentation, the second of the day, and so I opened with a few jokes -- wrapped within a brief introduction of myself and my career for the newer executives and sales reps -- to warm up the room and diffuse some of my own nervousness.  I'll be honest, I brought the house down.  As I moved into the informative portion of presentation, I could definitely feel some nervousness returning, but I think I did well enough and I got a lot of positive feedback.  It's definitely something that I'm happy to have gotten through, and it will be less scary next time, but I know there's some for improvement:

1. I prepared my speakers' notes well in advance, but I wish that I had taken some time to practice in front of the room I would be presenting in.  I'm not sure if that would have been possible this time or not.

2. I need to make my slides less wordy, so that I can look to them to briefly remind myself of my place if I need to, but not have to either "wing it" in how I summarize or look at my notes (which I had on my Kindle) as much as I did.

3.  I had my speakers notes on my Kindle, as mentioned above, thinking I'd look a little cooler up there with a tablet rather than printed notes.  I think old-school note cards would have been a better option than either.

A friend gave me some delivery skills pointers that I think will help me do a better job next time in calming down my body language to both appear and help myself feel less nervous, but I think it was really good for a first timer.  The positive is that I felt exactly like I did when I was a 24 or 25 year-old junior consultant on needs assessment calls with clients.  This is now a situation where I'm completely comfortable and confident, and I know I can get there in my presentation skills as well.

And, last but not least, running.  I've not done well at getting enough miles in the July and August heat, but now that summer is winding down, it's time to get serious again.  I had a very good four-miler on Saturday, and I ran 3 miles on Tuesday morning (on the hotel gym treadmill due to pouring rain) and three miles yesterday with a coworker in downtown Philadelphia, heading from our Center City hotel down the Ben Franklin Parkway to the Art Museum and back.

Of course we ran up the Art Museum steps.  Adrian!!!!!!!!!!!! Aaaaaaaaaaaaadrian!

Too Busy to Run (Again)

("run less, feed moar" says Pooka.)

I'm still in a little bit of a running funk right now.  Real life is kicking my butt lately and I think the really tough month of work ahead will make it hard to get the miles in that I would like to in June.  School's out soon, so that means my normal routes starting from the high school become less-trafficked to run in the morning.  Great, but it's hard to get up and run in the morning if I'm up working till 2am the night before.

That's what happened this week.  I ran 5 miles on Monday morning, the miles I'd gotten in after my zero-mile week, and then work just took over my whole week again and I didn't run again until a hilly 6-miler this morning.  

I know my job is more important than running, at least until I start winning big races and taking home huge cash prizes and racking up sponsorships and endorsements.  So yeah, my job will always be more important than running.  And luckily, I'm better at it.  I'm sure with harder training I could be much faster than I am.  I think I could even get to Boston.  I don't think there's a chance in hell that I could be fast enough to earn a living as a runner.  I'm mediocre-to-good now and could probably train myself up to above average at best, which is not going to win lots of big races.  I've been told I'm very, very good or even great at my job.


But still...running IS important and I need to make time for it.  I spend hours every day (and well into the night, lately) sitting and staring at my computer screen while I write very very very very very very important things!!!!  (Not this blog!)  While I do so, I probably snack more than I should, especially when I'm stressed.  If I want to avoid looking like Comic Book Guy from the Simpsons (Worst. Character. Ever.), I need to keep pounding the pavement and get back in the weight room.


I also need the stress-relief that it brings.  I think I started running to drop a few pounds and get in better shape.  Now, I run to keep out the darkness -- to fight stress and feel better about myself.  When every workday is a quagmire of ASAP deliverables, my stress level goes through the roof.  I need that 30-60 minutes where I can turn my brain off, listen to crappy punk rock, and not be able to do a thing about any of my projects.  And even though I think I'm very, very good at what I do, it still stresses me out, and I've found that running's given me something outside that arena to be proud of myself for.  "Yeah, but I ran (insert number of miles here) this morning."

I've rambled long enough.  I need to do better and here is my goal:  Counting a week from Monday to Sunday, like dailymile, I am going to run 15 miles next week and 20 miles every other week in June.  I don't care if I'm running them at 3am or in the hottest part of the day, I will get those miles in.  I'm not going to be able drop 100-mile months all summer like I did last year, but I think I can do a better in my road back to being at least the runner that I was a year ago.