For several years I attend telecom conferences and tradeshows while working for CLS Group. Typically these voyages would take me to Las Vegas a couple times a year, occasionally to Orlando and a few times to Nashville. These trips would always be the highlight of my year professionally speaking. They are kinda like a mecca for salesman. Think about it, three days where all of your current and potential clients are in one town, typically staying in one hotel and just asking to be schmoozed, wined and dined. We’d go into these trips with literally 20-30 mtgs a day set up, plus dinners and networking parties at night. Just slammed. Which looking back was a sign of my obsessive nature…..the more meetings the better right?? Wrong.
Regardless, early on, I lived for these trips.
Unfortunately, when the disease of addiction was triggered within me in my mid-twenties, I slowly began to lose my passion for these events. As the pills effects began to take hold of me, I became exceedingly reclusive. So much so that I would find myself making excuses to skip meetings just to stay in my room and use. I’d bug out of parties after making an initial walk through, just so I could run back upstairs, rent a movie and get a high for what was inevitably a short period of time and then drift into a state of loneliness and despair.
As my dependency grew, this routine began to be repeated throughout all my business travels.
In addition to these annual and semiannual shows I would often travel throughout the country pitching our services to everyone from carriers like T-Mobile and Verizon to defense contractors like General Dynamics and Bechtel. Once I traveled to Schenectady New York for a meeting at one of GE’s original offices. It was a good time. But the freedom, the drugs and my general lack of self-control proved to be a combination that destroyed me as a person. Mentally, physically and spiritually…..ruining my ability to function as a normal person, much less an executive responsible for producing at a high level.
Almost a year and half ago all the traveling stopped. My addiction had full control and I had to get help if I wanted to live. Thank God I did. Thank God He gave me another chance.
Today, life comes full circle. I am in Orlando FL back at a telecom event. Doing what I love to do and utilizing the gifts God’s given me. I am so grateful to have been given another chance to experience life. To soak in the blessings of travel, good company, good food, relationship building and earning an honest living. I plan to do things a little differently this time around. To make an effort to slow down and enjoy myself, to listen to others as they’re speaking to take an interest in their lives. To be present and accounted for when I am supposed to be. But most importantly to be grateful for this wonderful blessing that is my life.
There is no doubt in my mind today that Hope is Alive.
Fight the good Fight,
Lance
