The Back to School Opportunity

As I type this, my son has just rolled out of bed and is getting ready for his second day of school. Yep, Thursday the 13th of August and dude is preparing for day number two of school. I grew up in Wisconsin (I do love cheese if that thought just popped into your head) and by law, school could not start until after Labor Day because the states tourism industry needed the teen labor force to close out the summer. Regardless, kid one needed help with homework last night and kid two had me review a writing assignment and college essay draft in preparation for a Monday first day of school (kid two is a planner and as organized as they come – kudos to you kid two!).

So, who cares.  

The fact they have to go back to school really has no significant impact on my world. Sure, carpool and other logistics change (I just took a 10 minute break and made him lunch), but I really don’t have to do anything different. Work is still work, my commute is the same, I have some regularly scheduled meetings that will be the same and the sun is rising a bit later than it was a few days ago – the biggest change I see is that I can get to sleep earlier because the kids and their friends won’t be up until 2:00 am Monday – Friday and therefore, they won’t keep waking me up past my old man bed time of 10:00 pm.

Again, who cares. Kinda sounds like the status quo is working for me and I possibly am not involved in their worlds. BS on the back end of that statement and the front of the sentence is crap as well. I see opportunity right now – opportunity to shake up my routine and do some inner-reflection on what adjustments and tweaks I can make to my daily / weekly work habits. So this morning, I got up at oh-god:thirty and after I poured a cup of coffee, I got out paper and pencil (how retro of me) and made a list of five things I want to do different today and two things I want to do different tomorrow. By choice, I am looking very short term and my choices are very finite. For today, two involve ways I can support my sales team, two can support customers, and one is… again who cares Dave.

The details don’t matter as you would not go to a free seminar to hear what I want to do, but the point is – back to school is giving me the mental green light to critically reflect upon myself, and implement some changes that I feel will add value. I could say I see opportunity or I see an opportunity to make some choices. Choice is powerful thing. I thank you for choosing to read and if you choose to send us one extra PO today that would be very cool. Just kidding (not really), but if you agree that back to school season is an opportunity to make a change to your daily routine to better yourself, coworkers, and clients – right on. As my oldest said to me yesterday, “life is booger dad, I guess it’s how you roll it and flick it that counts”. Ok… very Forest Gump life is like a box of chocolates thinking and a very unique mental picture, but yep – life gives you many choices… I am fighting the urge to quote Yoda now and will instead choose to end. Happy selling… and feel free to share in the comments below, how your “opportunities for change” have gone.

PS – I am going to do everything in my power to get that roll and flick line into the college essay – the thought of an admission person reading that cracks me. I guess my sense of humor has trickled down to my youngins. Yeah for me.

About the Author

Dave Brown is the Vice President of Sales at Optima™.
He has been in the Trade Show industry since the early 90s.

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