Perhaps the hardest part of my job and life is managing all the different personalities that are in my sphere of existence. The dynamic of having four kids under the age of 7 is a nonstop management of different personalities and emotions. Then you add on it my company which has over 100 team members with different layers of experience, where usually the most experienced require the most time to manage their different personalities and needs. As if this weren’t enough, then there is my primary role of operation, which is managing clients, which creates a whole different level of management of people and emotions. It’s kind of like you run on a hamster wheel at 200 miles per hour, and you find very little time to manage yourself because of all the time you spend to manage the needs and personalities of someone else.

I have to admit that I crave the need to be constantly involved in doing something to stay busy, but I also admit that it would be nice to take a break from dealing with people sometimes. (Going back to the second sentence that even when I take time off and am not working there is still the management of little personalities that are by far the most important to me). But as there is a need of mine to constantly be busy at something which is in my nature to make quick decisions, it is also tested over time that the more I methodically and slowly navigate issues between all the different personalities the better the outcomes will be.

The trick to managing so many different personalities that I have found is to never let yourself get too emotionally involved. When you let your emotions run faster than your own ability to be level is when I find the most problems occur. Catering to so many different thoughts and opinions by those around me can sometimes be equal to a judge that is hearing both sides of a court case. You try not to pick a side based on what you like, think, or your own bias, but you try to remain as steeped in common sense as you possibly can be at all times. (Doesn’t always happen that way). But I find the outcome is always greater when you have time to be level headed and think through all the different situations that these different personalities throw at you.

What you have to remember as you manage all the personalities that you deal with on a daily basis is that everyone has their own agenda and will sell you on why their way is the right way. And what generally happens is people tend to make decisions that favor those who are more similar in nature to themselves. The moral of all this and the situation I found myself dealing with today reminded me that a big part of managing is dealing with all the different types of personalities. And you will only be effective in managing these personalities as you are at managing your balance of emotions and ability to hear and see all sides of a situation.

This is the one time of year when, for a few days, there is actually a chance to sit down and reflect on how thankful I am for everything in my life. As I think through all the struggles, challenges, successes and losses, there really is so much that it’s a shame we only take one day out of the year to celebrate.

When you are constantly moving at a very high rate of speed, it can be hard to take any real time to stop and think about all the blessings that you have in your life. But sometimes, I am just thankful that I am so busy and able to move at such a high rate of speed. It is rewarding for me to be able to go to so many places and do so much and have a family and an organization that allows me to do such.

Even if there isn’t much time in your life on a daily basis. Even if things are so crazy and somewhat chaotic all the time, I urge you to stop and take a few minutes over the Thanksgiving holiday to truly think about how thankful you are for your life and all that is in it.

While traveling earlier this week on business I had such long flights to make that I parked my own plane and flew the airlines. All the flights were direct flights and the times seemed to really work for my schedule so it made perfect sense to travel this way to be more efficient.

On my last flight before I got back home, I was sitting in seat 3B. After boarding the plane, I pulled out my computer to read emails and send some things out before we took off. Working feverishly up until the door closed, I was typing, texting and getting everything done that I could to make the best use of my time. Then the door closed and I put my laptop up and took my AirPods out and sat back in my seat and took a deep breath.

About a minute later, I opened my eyes and the guy in seat 3A reached over and introduced himself and shook my hand. He immediately launched into talking about his travel, where he was from, where he was going, and after about 30 seconds I starting thinking to myself, “oh boy, I’m sitting next to a real talker and this is going to be a long ride home.” So once we got up in the air, I pulled my computer out and started working again. With a laptop on my tray table and a notebook in my lap, it was going to be very hard for this guy to interrupt me. But through the flight, I finished all the work I could possibly do and then put my stuff back up and opened myself up to more conversation from my neighbor in seat 3A.

The guy started talking about his businesses, which ranged from everything from computer software to underground drilling to operating a casino on an Indian reservation. And I have to admit that my bullshit meter was pegged thinking this guy can’t possibly be for real.

Then he quit talking about business and started talking about his kids.

He told me he had three boys ranging from 15 to 25 years old and gave me some of the most profound advice I have gotten in a long time on parenting. He said, “No matter what you do, tell your kids constantly that you love them, and no matter what they do, you will always be there for them.” He talked about how kids are afraid of things and how they are going to make mistakes and that no matter how bad a mistake, they are always your kids and you will always love them. Then he said more. He talked about telling your wife the same thing. That marriage is the most difficult thing you will ever navigate in your life and that as long as you tell your wife constantly how much you love her it will make your life better.

As if that wasn’t enough, he chimed in on the subject about how much time you spend with your wife and kids by saying, “I have made a successful career, built great businesses and amassed a lot – but all of these things have stolen my time. I’m sitting here being very blessed, but the one thing that I have robbed myself of is my time.” That’s when I knew that the guy in seat 3A was put there for a reason. It was a reminder that I needed to hear all of this and hear it at such a busy/important time in my life.

I think that I, like a lot of people, am guilty of taking things for granted. And while being chatty on a plane isn’t something that I can say I like to do, I think this was one of the greatest reminders of being sure you have your priorities straight in life. There will never be a way to get back lost time.

You may think that this picture is taken from one of those Facebook or Instagram sites that shows up from time to time in your feeds trying to sell you motivational artwork or posters (the truth, probably, is you need something more to motivate you because you are looking at social media too much not and focused on the task at hand). But I’ll save my soapbox on positive motivation and brag on my daughter Lilly Grace for a minute. This isn’t something I found on one of those sites selling the flashy motivational artwork and not anything that I created or came up with, but something that 7-year-old Lilly Grace Strong wrote on a Post-It note and taped to the back of the seat that faces her in Amy’s car. She was going to a gymnastics class that was kind of intimidating to her and she came up with this image all on her own and, without anyone knowing, went out to the car and taped it to the seat in front of her.

The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree in a lot of areas, but for this one, I will take zero credit for this act of motivation. While I read a ton of motivational stuff and spend a lot of time working on staying positive, I have never taped a motivational note to my mirror, put anything in my wallet or kept something of motivation on my desk. I simply just have never been one of those kinds of people. My mind wanders so much that I wouldn’t focus on it even if it were right there looking me in the face.

I would never have thought of something like this at age 7 and certainly never put it where anyone else could see it. Like her, I was very shy at that age, but what I lacked that she possesses is a mode of confidence and a way to will herself to stay positive and not have a fear of things that are difficult.

In our Monday morning account team meeting, we had a quote on screen from Henry Ford which said: “Whether you think you can or think you can’t, you’re right.” While it was on screen I thought to myself, that would be a great quote to put on the wall in my children’s bedrooms so they could read it every day and develop a sense of confidence at an early age. As I think of this note, that makes me so proud of my daughter I think it is my responsibility from this day forward to always teach my kids the power of something that truly motivates them.

For the last 5 months, I have been dealing with something very difficult. Just in a time when my life feels fully together with a great balance of family time, work and success at an all-time high there has been a snake in the grass that jumps up and bites me periodically.

By now you are thinking, this guy has some type of issue or habitual problem coming to haunt him, but it is quite the opposite. One of my largest clients –and even more, someone who has become a very good friend – has turned into someone so manipulative and calculating that I am not sure I can even recognize them.

I do my best to work 24/7, meaning I’m always turned on and looking at emails and details that it takes to run my business around the clock. There really is no work/life balance. But as I have gotten far better at it this year, there are still moments when you get sucked into dealing or seeing problems that arise. That is when this client always seemed to appear out of nowhere with damning remarks, comments so gruff that your father never spoke to you in this way even in your wildest teenage years. This would place me in a really bad place while trying to enjoy a day off or afternoon with the kids, or even the best yet – an email sent at 9:22 p.m. on a Friday night asking for a copy of our contract because they were so unhappy.

So on Saturday, September 7^th, I took a long walk in the woods at the lake with my son, Hudson. This was the morning after the 9:22 email, and we had a great hour together. We saw deer running across the road. Hudson picked up sticks and jabbed at dinosaur bones (really just a dead deer’s skeleton, but dinosaur bones sounded much cooler) and enjoyed a nice hour together away from the world, ringing cell phones and nasty emails from this client that I will call the dragon.

Well, today, after much anticipation and many days/nights of plotting my next move, I finally slew the dragon. And I did it in a way that was called gracious and eloquent. The dragon breathed a lot of fire for a long time. The dragon was a really good friend of mine – or so I thought before their ego, greed and lack of character took over. The dragon was a source of great revenue, but at the end of the day, I decided it was time to slay the dragon. Nobody is certain of the future and what it holds, but one thing is certain: that living for what you want and need out of life is far better than being captive to a dragon.

As I progress through my life and career, things seem to get infinitely bigger.

The challenges and hurdles seem to get bigger. The victories and defeats seem to get bigger. The mere task of trying to get all the kids in the car to go to dinner is a monumentally bigger task.  Everything just seems to be bigger in its scope and scale.

I used the phrase “climbing mountains” because now it seems that one week doesn’t go by where there isn’t a substantial mountain to climb. And the mountains aren’t to be thought of in a bad way, but a lot of the mountains I am now climbing are substantial opportunities that have presented themselves for me to grow both in my personal life and my career.

It’s either the mountain in the form of a very big meeting, new business presentation, personnel issue or sometimes all of the above, but they all are presented in my path as I try to navigate each week. This isn’t to sound like a complaint, because I love the thrill of always being “on” and always having a new obstacle in my path to overcome, but it still can sometimes seem overwhelming that every week and sometimes even every day there is a mountain in front of me to climb.

The key things that I find myself doing to climb these mountains are in no particular order, but as follows:

1. Always stay positive. Even when you want to be negative, DON’T LET YOURSELF GO HERE – just stay positive.
2. Don’t sweat the small stuff. Always be on top of your game mentally, but don’t let the tiny details spin you out of control.
3. Trust those who are around you and help you. Don’t try to over-control everything, but give direction and let people go execute on their own.
4. Don’t look too far ahead. You have to first climb the mountain that you are on before moving on to the next one. Know what your end goal is, but you have to climb one mountain at a time.
5. Take time for those around you. Recently, I have refocused to tell everyone I know happy birthday, check on old friends and just try to be a better and more approachable person. This makes you feel at ease when the world is spinning so fast around you.

There will always be mountains to climb. Just take the time to enjoy the hike, and appreciate the fact that they are still coming your way.

There is a certain euphoric state that washes over you when you win something big. Those who either play sports or compete for wins that cause survival or failure in business know what I am talking about. You put so much thought, effort and preparation into big competitions that you really set yourself up for a monumental feeling if you win or utter depression if you were to lose.

Recently, my company won a very large piece of business that will give us an even larger base to grow and advance our future success from. It was an amazing win that took several months from the start to finish. And even after the in-person presentation, there still was almost a month’s worth of wait time until we had a final decision. It was a tremendous win for our team and one that will be remembered for quite a long period of time. We don’t win all the time, but for the things that we really want to win – those that we really go hard after – we are able to win them a lot of the time. I’m lucky enough to be the leader of the company both in spirit and legally on paper and I think that people oftentimes don’t know what happens in these big presentations (or advertising agency pitches, as we call them) that sets us up for such success. It isn’t anything that I do, or the team members in the presentation do, that is the single cause for a win, but a combination of what happens throughout a process.

The real winning comes from a couple of different areas:

First, it takes the self-discipline to set aside your own time and the time of others to adequately prepare for something you are trying to win. Paul Bear Bryant and Vince Lombardi had similar sayings, and to paraphrase from each of them it’s that “you don’t have to just have the will to win, you have to have the will to prepare to win.” And there couldn’t be a more accurate statement.  You have to prepare yourself mentally for your competition before you ever get to your competition. Then, you have to prepare yourself mentally that you are going to win your competition, as people can tell winners from losers just by looking at them. Don’t get me wrong on this subject, either. I have lost just as many things as I have won when it comes to pitching new business in my career, and without fail, I can track back 90 percent of the losses to not taking the time to prepare for a winning outcome. Not taking the time to instruct other people what needed to happen to prepare for a winning outcome. And frankly, just not believing in being a winner enough to have a winning outcome. If you invest the time to prepare to win and create a belief system that you can win, then you have already won in the most critical area of the process.

Next, you must have a point of differentiation of what you do different and why you do it differently that is beneficial for the person you are trying to win over if you want to be the clearly-defined winner. This is what sets you apart when you are in a setting like a new business pitch. It is your point of differentiation, your value proposition, the very essence of what you can do and provide that others cannot. Also, be quick to understand that it isn’t all about being the lowest price, either. There are certain people that will go “bargain shopping” when they are looking for a product or service, but that is only one segment of the population. There are a lot more people who, in buying a great product or service with a great brand name, know it will take care of them for quite a long time. This is also where you cannot get so busy talking about yourself when pitching a new piece of business that you leave out the “what’s in it for the customer” moments. You have to go into a hell of a lot of detail with what I call “Simple Speak.” Simple Speak just means that you have to talk to people and present ideas in ways that they understand. You cannot talk over their heads or allow them to glaze over. To win, you have to show and describe in great detail why you are the right choice and why you should be crowned as the winner. And all while you do this, you must do it with total confidence and zero doubt. People will see right through it.

Bringing it home, the fact of whether you are competing to win or lose something in business really comes down to what type of value you can get the customer to see. There is always an ending point when you are in competition for a certain win where you make your final run at why someone should do business with you and why you are the winner. This is the single greatest element in the personal presentation part of a competition. This is a testament to your preparation, your points of differentiation and finally, what your summation or bottom line assessment is as to why someone should choose you as the winner.

But wait, we are not done yet. What lies last is what can be the single greatest element that is overlooked by many competitors (and I thank them every day for it and pray they never get any smarter and learn from what I do), and that is the follow-up.

My father taught me early on in my career that deals are won and lost most of the time in the follow-up phase. You have to be the one who follows up with the most information and does it the most often to secure your place at the top of the podium as the one who provides the most value. One time in a follow-up after a pitch for new business, someone told me that they knew from all of my emails that I definitely knew how to conduct a spam campaign. But your manner of follow-up must show value and you must show that you can continue to deliver value each and every time that you reach back out in an effort to win. Follow-up is the key to success in winning any competition that isn’t a time-sanctioned event. The one who follows up the most usually has the best chance of winning.

In closing, I didn’t write this blog to talk about myself as a winner.  I wrote this blog for those who read it to see that it truly is a set of steps that begins with the phase of preparation and ends with intense follow-up. It’s not about who dresses the flashiest or says all the right things but rather more about who is a diligent practitioner in following the steps necessary to win.

My personality is defined as that of an architect, which makes my main strength the ability to formulate or create a plan. I have a constantly evolving vision, and it outweighs the need to connect with others. I may appear outgoing, but there are usually so many things in my head at any given moment that it drowns out social interactions. It is never acceptable for me to be caught off-guard, and usually the outcome from an off-guard moment is not good. I focus as much time and attention as needed to prepare for meetings, presentations or even discussions and will run through scenarios many times over in my head before engaging in these forums.

Compartmentalization is a key ingredient in my DNA. When at work, it’s all work. When at home, it’s all home. When doing anything else, I do I have to compartmentalize; otherwise, trying to exist in two places at once makes me less effective. If at home and there are emails I am reading or calls I am taking, it is almost like I am not home at all. Or, if I am thinking about something and someone tries to talk to me, I rarely can hold a conversation.

My internal motor turns very fast, and if I am not trying to juggle multiple things at a time, then it is very boring. I have an absolute love for the details and an eye for anything that looks incorrect. Putting detail into meeting notes, documents, or even finding a speck of paint on a baseboard where it should not be are things I pay attention to. Also, I have an expectation that everyone is supposed to do what is asked of them 100 percent of the time. 

I live with a deeply-rooted hatred for math, yet I love to look at numbers and can remember almost any number that is of any importance to me or represents a special date or time.  I do not believe in taking a lunch break, and skipping lunch most days in my career has, on average, allowed me five more hours of productivity a week x 50 weeks a year x 15 years is over 3,500 hours. I read a quote years ago that said, “No one will outwork me.” That fits.

Outside of work, there is spending time with my family. And other than having a couple of beers with friends and occasionally bird or turkey hunting, my life is pretty simple. I don’t dress up much, don’t go out to eat much, never go to movies, concerts, football games, or anything that is going to chew up a bunch of my time. I prefer sitting back and entertaining my wife and kids when not around or consumed with work.

My tombstone should read my favorite quote: “There are three types of people in the world: those who make things happen, those who watch things happen, and those who stand around and wonder what the hell just happened.” I have tried to live – ever since I heard that when I was 18 years old – as a person who can make things happen. 

Lastly, here are things that will make my head explode: having to tell somebody something twice, being late to a meeting or phone call, making excuses, not owning a mistake, bad attitudes, spreading rumors, discontent, complacency, and blaming others. Stay away from these actions, traits, and characteristics, and we will get along just fine.

I write this post while flying back from Boston to Birmingham after spending five days at the esteemed Harvard Business School, finishing up a four-year program that earned me a Certificate of Management through an executive education program. It gets shown in our agency’s morning announcements each day that “JPS @ Harvard” and I can only imagine what the office chatter is about with people asking what I am doing there. 

To give some background, a colleague who runs another kind of professional service firm told me about this program when he attended in 2015 and said, “Man, you’ve got to do this.” Reluctantly, (because I swore I would never go back to school) I did the program the first time in the summer of 2016. It was such an amazing time, and I got so much out of the program I went back for another program the following year until I realized that two more course selections would make me eligible to get a certificate of management.

So, why did I keep going back?  Well, it is certainly not from a lack of things to do and having enough time in my schedule. It was a lot of sacrifice, not only on my time but also because every other course I have taken was in the summer, which ate into the time of my family vacations. Amy had a lot of patience the last few years because, in lieu of nice week-long trips, we pretty much did family vacations in a couple of days plus a weekend so there would be time for me to go to these sessions.  But each time I went, there were always ah-ha moments, and there were plenty of them. I took very detailed notes each time and would always type them up after the classes to have something I can always refer back to as I go forward in my career. But, that still doesn’t answer the biggest part of why I kept going back: to be in a room and hear lectures and stories from guys who ran companies like JP Morgan Chase, Dell Computers, Bain Capital, Honeywell and others who were 5 Star Military Generals who also had Ph.D.s, and those who had spent their whole lives in academia based on running and operating companies like mine was priceless. (Well, actually not; it was expensive, but worth every minute and every penny).

So, what did I get out of it? I got a real sense of accomplishment because hearing what other companies do and struggle with and seeing what Strong Automotive Merchandising does on a daily basis has me flying back with a real sense of accomplishment. Is everything I or the agency does perfect?  Not by any means. But are we doing things right where they really matter?  The answer is yes.

This week, I spent a little bit of time at the office where we mine and print our direct mail and equity letters.

For those not familiar with the automotive business, this is a highly detailed form of marketing that is most often done through direct mail and email.  It is also a company that we had used as a vendor for a long time but had the option at the end of 2017 to purchase and operate as our own business.

In the very beginning, it felt like you were jumping into a time warp just based on the executions and equipment that were in this company, as the previous owners had not paid it much attention, nor would they ever spend any money and invest in their people and their infrastructure. 

This week, though, I walked in as we are on the tail end of an office renovation and have a couple of new team members in the organization who are breathing new signs of life into the place. It felt very good to see what has transpired in the short 15 months since taking it over, where the normal monthly work used to average around 70,000 pieces of mail to a total last month of over 350,000 pieces of mail. The speed and energy of the place has been jolted and felt vibrant as I spent a couple of days there. While it is far from perfect and still in very humble beginnings, it is a place that has a ton of momentum behind it and is starting to really develop a set of legs all on its own.

It’s really quite refreshing. I stood back in a makeshift loading garage where we are currently running all the printers while we complete the last stages of the renovation, and I looked at it in awe of all that had been accomplished.

I smiled for a minute when I thought about all of the people (even some of our own employees from the agency who had seen this operation before I bought it) who told me how it was “never going to work” and “was not a good investment.” Not that I am a person who feels they have to be right all the time, but do think of myself as an optimist who has a keen sense of seeing opportunity. 

Sometimes the brightest and shiniest of all objects are best when they come from humble beginnings.