John Paul Strong, Author at John Paul Strong

New Energy = New Hours

by John Paul Strong | Sep 13, 2018

So, I’m over a week into my new diet. If you are curious about it, just read the last blog post. I still don’t know why I waited until after Labor Day to start it.

This diet consist of eating smaller meals (pre-packaged) multiple times per day and what is classified as one lean-and-green meal a day. The cool part about this diet and one that people kid me about a lot is this: While I am traveling during the week, I generally only find time to eat one meal a day anyway. So, this diet is perfect for me and gives me self-justification as to why I can go through the day traveling all over the place and simply not stop to eat.

But, what I am finding is that I have a whole new level of energy, which to me equals a whole new amount of work that can be completed. It’s odd, but as an already self-diagnosed “workaholic,” there are even more hours in a day that I find myself working, and it is really a great feeling. I have the ability to focus more on certain tasks and ideas, all while being genuinely more enthusiastic and engaged at just about everything that I encounter. It’s really hard to imagine that something so simple like changing your way of eating and limiting the amount of bad food you consume can make such a change, but I have to admit that it 100 percent does.

My favorite parts of this new diet in order are as follows:

Midnight Madness. I can work late into the night and over the past couple of days have found myself working well into midnight and sometimes longer.

Up & At ‘Em. It’s easier to wake up in the morning and I am more energetic right from the get-go. It doesn’t take as much time to “get moving,” as I call it, in getting going before I leave for work or a meeting.

Act Faster. I am more proactive in accomplishing tasks. Whereas before the last two weeks I might have put something off for a while, I now want to tackle it faster because I have more energy.

Clearer Thinking. I have better thoughts and more clear ways in my mind to look at situations and issues.

Never Stopping. I feel like I have my never-stop mentality dialed in a little more than it had been in the past.

Sometimes I don’t last super long on diets or in following a plan, but so far so good. I really have a great mindset right now about the coming weeks to see how far I can take this thing.

Feelin’ Better

by John Paul Strong | Sep 7, 2018

There is something about a four-day work week after a Monday holiday that just makes you feel better about everything.

This week was especially “better feeling” for me as I started a new diet on Tuesday which is basically a physical and mental cleansing of sorts. Yes, Tuesday is an odd day to start a diet and a lifestyle change, but very wisely to her credit, Amy (my wife) convinced me that trying to start a new diet before Labor Day weekend was going to be a blatant mistake. So, I wisely listened to her advice and here goes nothing.

Some people think that my job and what I get to do is totally glamorous.

I’m not going to lie; there are parts of it that completely rock and sometimes make me wonder, “What in the hell did I do to deserve this?” These can be things like taking clients to wonderful restaurants for extremely nice dinners, having drinks in some of the coolest bars around the world and getting to be good friends with the dealers you do business with on a daily basis. Occasionally, you luck up and take a client to a great sporting event like a game at Yankee’s stadium, Fenway Park or just a good ole Alabama Football game. Then, there is all the flying. I love to fly. Planes have amazed me ever since I was a little kid, and there is nothing more that I like to see than a sunrise at 30,000 feet or a sunset flying home at the end of a long day, or just flying over middle America and looking at all the rivers and fields that make up our country. Yes, there are parts of what I get to do that are simply amazing.

Then there are the parts of my job that would kill a lot of people.

Landing at midnight after delayed flights only to find there are no rental cars left. Figuring out your Uber driver is so drugged up they cannot even speak, and wondering if you are going to die in the back seat of a Corolla on an interstate. Eating dinner out of a vending machine in a crappy hotel because there is nothing else open and you forgot to eat that day. Having food poisoning from one of the “world class” restaurants mentioned above and having to go to a meeting where you can barely stand and can’t keep down any fluids. Landing in a city for a meeting and turning on your phone only to get an email that a client is firing you. Going halfway across the country to meet someone only for them to start the meeting off with, “This isn’t going to work out.” And, last but not least, waking up at 2 a.m. before you have to get up at 4 a.m. to catch a flight and not being able to go back to sleep. For all the glamour, there sure are some parts that completely suck.

So, why am I “feelin’ better”?

My new diet is a form of clean living / lean and green. No processed foods, low carbs, portion control, all natural, no oils, no fats, no sugars and no alcohol. The first two days were stunning to my system, but the last two really have me feeling and sleeping better.

I’ve spent four consecutive days in the office, and they have been rejuvenating. While I’m never in the office for a full week, this week was a blessing because I dealt with some issues that needed to be addressed, got caught up on a ton of projects and burnt up the phones calling clients, prospects, friends, basically anyone who would talk to me.

My thoughts have caught up with my vision. After my recent time at Harvard it has been a whirlwind. Family trips, business trips, back to school, getting used to four children – my life has been even more chaotic than usual. But this week, while cleansing myself, I thought a lot about things that affect my future, and I feel very good about the direction that things are headed.

Nobody probably ever admits burnout until they are far too burnt to ever recover. While I am nowhere close to being burnt, it is so refreshing to take a step back, cleanse your body and mind and begin to focus on what the next chapter looks like. And, in case you were wondering, my goal with this diet is to lose 20 lbs. Stay tuned for that – more to follow.

All… The… Drama…

by John Paul Strong | Aug 31, 2018

There is a great saying somebody once taught me:“Everybody wants to have your job until it’s time to do your job.” And sometimes, I think to myself, I sure would like to give it to them just for a minute.

Being the leader of multiple organizations and a self-described “grower of people,” weeks like this sometimes give me a need to have a drama release-valve that I can pull and let all of the crap I get to put up with go up into smoke.

While I truly enjoy what I get to do and most of the time enjoy the people I do it with, sometimes it can be a daunting task to deal with day-in and day-out. Some of my favorites from this week are:

Nobody Wants to Work Together – We construct teams at my company who work in tandem on accounts and specific projects. It’s great to have layers and layers of people who can back each other up, catch mistakes and relieve the burden. But every so often (and this week is no exception), the teams start fighting over workload, who entered a project wrong, who took too long to complete a task, even who wore too much cologne to work. The thing I wish they all could understand is without the work – nobody in the organization including myself gets a paycheck. So you might as well do it, do it the best you can and enjoy it.
I Deserve More Than I Get to Do – I luckily had a great mentor at my first job out of college. David Martin gave me a great start, a great platform to learn from and the ability to create upward mobility for myself. I was hired to be a sales assistant but quickly found a way to help out in so many ways that I was selling myself (which had been my goal). But one day, when they came around and said none of the sales staff helped go pick up the mail from the post office a few miles away and that our day should be Tuesday and John Paul should be chosen to go get the mail, I didn’t say a damn word. I put a smile on my face, got in the company pick-up truck and drove through downtown Birmingham to the post office to get the mail. Or, there’s the time all the woman in the office were going to a wedding shower for one of the owner’s daughters. They were upset because none of the guys wanted to answer the phone. So, I raised my hand, volunteered and happily answered the phones for two hours on a Friday. Sure, the other guys laughed at me, but I didn’t care. I made the owners happy and showed my true willingness to help the company. Today, it sure is different. Everybody around me it seems thinks a little higher of themselves than they actually are (at least on a week like this one), and they expect everything to be done for them instead of going out and having to do it themselves. “I deserve” is a very scary thought to have go into your mind and one that I am lucky very rarely enters mine.
That’s Not Really My Fault – Sure, the materials you are taking to a meeting halfway across the country are wrong, and even though I put them together for you, let me tell you why it’s not really my fault. I understand that nobody is perfect but when you make a mistake you will always win favor with me or a person like me if you own the mistake instead of making an excuse. People who learn how to own their mistakes can have tremendous careers in an organization like mine.

Sometimes, when traveling hundreds of miles a day at 500 miles per hour, you get tired. You become exhausted. Your mind is trying to still work but it’s impossible to focus. To me, that is my driver. That is what pushes me to continue and try to increase momentum even when you have a decreasing energy level.

It’s times like these where I think of another one of my favorite quotes I learned: “Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die to get there.”

My Newest Way to Stay Sane

by John Paul Strong | Aug 24, 2018

Earlier this month, I went to Harvard to take a 7-day course on “Authentic Leadership.” Just like any class or seminar I attend, my goal is to always walk out with three things from it that go into a real-life application. This class was surprisingly challenging because of the amount of thought into yourself and what makes you who you are that I have never thought about.

But one of the things that I got out of it was that, at the end of every day right before you go to bed, you need to write down three things on a piece of paper that happened to you that day that you are thankful for. To admit, this didn’t happen as soon as I left the course; rather, I started it this week. It has been a crazy week with an enormous amount of travel and a lot of moving pieces, but I finally got to where I am getting into the habit of writing down my daily gratitude list at the end of each day. It is very therapeutic and so far is proving to be my newest way to stay a little saner than normal.

So today’s list goes something like this:

Great Hotels – No, I don’t stay at a Ritz Carlton every night, but after traveling so much for so many years trying to save every dollar and stay in smaller chain hotels near the dealerships I visit, I have made a change. When it allows and there is something relatively close, I will stay at something a little nicer where the shower curtain doesn’t leak on the bathroom floor. After all, you can sell more the more charged your batteries are, right?
Clients Who Trust – Today, I had a couple of different client meetings and assumed I was fully prepared with at least 200 pages of material for each one. However, the focus of the meeting was on their business and ideas I had that were not in the 200 pages sitting on the desk. The only pages that mattered and got any attention were the ones with the overall budget, but both clients emphatically said – “I trust you.” That makes you feel like you have done a lot right to be entrusted with that much money.
People Who Recognize You From Afar – While getting to my last stop of the day, I checked into my hotel, dropped off my bags in the room and went downstairs to the restaurant for a quick bite. While planning to eat at the bar by myself, I walked in and saw an old friend who technically is a competitor but also someone who cares because he always refers business to me when he can. I haven’t seen Tim in 14 years, but as I walked up to the hostess (where he was standing by waiting for his guest) I said “Tim?” he said “John Paul?” and we reconnected just like it was yesterday since we last met. Knowing people by their personality sometimes makes you feel like you never even have missed them.

So take the advice or leave it, but this is a great way to keep yourself sane while navigating through the busy world that we deal with every day.

Decisions

by John Paul Strong | Aug 23, 2018

Usually, every time that something goes drastically wrong with work or life you can always point it back to a decision that was made that was the turning point. (Or the breaking point sometimes in my case?)

I made the decision today to terminate someone’s employment contract who was probably one of the most unrealistic and crazy people I had ever met. When I hired this guy to be a contract salesperson for an affiliated company to my agency, I kept telling myself, “What do I have to lose?” Contract sales people have no salary, no benefits, no insurance… so it’s simple – if they do not produce, you don’t have to pay them.

Looking back, that was the turning point that caused me to waste about 50 hours of my life dealing with this individual and getting them out of my company. Fifty hours that I will never get back. It was one single decision that caused – and still is causing – so much grief and attention that I would pay anything for a time machine to go back and change my decision.

All I can do now is learn to grow from it. Better decisions must be made in order to keep growing and, looking back, I can only learn from my mistakes. Sometimes, all I want to do is move so fast and make so many quick decisions that I can keep on moving, but eventually – and just like this current situation with a contract seller – it causes me to regret my decision.

I’m really looking forward to tomorrow.

Because with a new sunrise, I will have the ability to make a lot of new and better decisions.

The “Alarm Clock Suntan”

by John Paul Strong | Aug 23, 2018

I’ve started referring to those nights before big meetings or before the start of a long road trip where you wake up somewhere between midnight and 2 a.m. and never find a way to make it back to sleep as the nights I am working on my “alarm clock suntan.”

It’s given this name because it’s one of those nights where you stare at the alarm clock so much you could literally get yourself a tan while looking at it – consciously trying to make it back to sleep. Usually, you don’t make it back to sleep because you are playing through your mind all the details that go into a meeting or that you are wanting to remember for that meeting.

The start to this week has been nothing short of busier-than-usual. Both Sunday and Monday nights were “alarm clock suntan” nights, with a lot of the out-of-town staff coming in the office for a big meeting on Monday, and then leaving the house at 5:30 Tuesday morning to get to a large client meeting. Sometimes you simply don’t have any choice but to have monumental events on back-to-back days. In my own mind, here is how I handle days like these:

Always remember that you are far more prepared than you ever think you are.
Think back to a time when you were very relaxed and try to take yourself back to that place mentally.
Remind yourself that nobody is going to be able to look at you and think – gee, that guy didn’t sleep last night. That’s usually never a first impression someone thinks.
Know that the end is near… Not the end of your life, but in a few hours you will be past that big event in your life causing you to no sleep, and you will be on to something else.
Understand that you have to find time to make it up. My kids sometimes ask after I get home from a week of travel, “Why does Dad sleep so much?” Well – maybe they will understand one day.

I read a quote the other day that said, “You only get one go-around in this life, so you might as well make it count.”

Those are the kinds of things that help you get through the nights when you find yourself working on your “alarm clock suntan.”

Every Idea is Not a Winner

by John Paul Strong | Aug 20, 2018

Today, I had a tough decision to make in front of other people.

While traveling for work to visit a client, there were a couple of people traveling with me to attend a rather large meeting. We were reviewing strategies early in the morning to figure out which recommendation we thought would be the best to present to the client. There were differing opinions and a lot of factors that went into deciding which outcome would be the best direction to go. While both people who were with me are extremely talented, there was only one solution that could be presented based on the issue we were trying to solve. So, doing what everybody does, I listened to all sides, heard where each person was basing their position from and finally made a decision on what we were going to go talk to that client about.

It was like a pressure valve had just been released in my head because it gave me a clear understanding of what we should base our opinions and ideas on – after hearing the best sides of the argument. However, there was a transfer of all the pressure that I was carrying around that got passed to the person who did not have the winning idea. I could see it in their face the moment that I announced which way we were going. Their body language changed immediately, their attention turned off and the best part of it – they gave me the silent treatment. It was one of those moments where you wish that everyone would just grow up and act like an adult, but also a very humbling moment to realize the power that a person tasked with being a decision-maker holds.

Every idea is not a winner. Every situation you face is not a winner. Everyone you encounter is not a winner. But, as I reflect on this day and situation, I am reminded that you are not going to be able to make everyone happy all of the time. We don’t live in candy land, we live in a real world where people are forced to make choices. The choice is not always easy, and some are greater than others, but at the end of the day whether in work or in life I always make the choice I feel will better everyone around me.

As for the client, they loved the idea presented. They went for it with aggression and passion, so in the end, the decision appears at this point to be the right one.

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