In effect, I was getting face time, even though my core business wasn’t needed or wanted. The net effect was that we rebounded much faster when the economy finally turned. In 1991 I had co-created Skate for Kids with our founder Harold Perry and my colleague Stephen Milic, a project that enrolled 30 companies and that has since become an annual event with $800,000 in net funds raised. In 2002 I co-founded Marketing Hall of Legends (MHOL) with Jim Warrington of the American Marketing Association, which has inducted more than 50 iconic Canadians for lifetime marketing achievements. MHOL now has a multi-tiered legacy program, mentoring marketers on the rise and giving back to charities in need. Thousands of executives have attended the event and contributed their wisdom through the Mentor Exchange program. I realized that these projects were as important to me as a legacy as my core business was.
I finished my presentation with the simple statement that I needed to find a challenge, a project of some sort that could handle my sorrows.
Preparing for the conference had reminded me of how I could get out of out of the funk my business and I were in. These two initiatives had helped me accelerate the business when markets finally rebounded. I should do the same again.
At work we restructured and shelved programs, and at home we cut what we could. While it wasn’t the picture I had imagined of my life at 44 years of age, so it went. Now, on a new, leaner financial diet, I needed to turn to myself and find my challenge.
November 2008
Exercise is for people who can’t handle drugs and alcohol.
—LILY TOMLIN, ACTRESS
In mid-November I slowly shifted my focus to the things I could control. I decided I was ready for a breakthrough that would help me stop feeling helpless and victimized by the economy. I decided that 2009 would end with the successful achievement of these objectives:
1. Get fit.
Why not finish 2009 the fittest I’d ever been? I asked myself. I could use the stamina to deal with business issues.
2. Change my life scorecard.
Since work had defined more of who I was than anything else, I needed a new scorecard to help me avoid getting sucked into the negative vortex of what was becoming the toughest year at work in 20 years. Work would be important but not define me. I decided to find out, in 2009, what would define me.
3. Be positive.
I decided to create affirming conversational capital to inspire myself, my staff, and the desperate people I interviewed every day.
4. Reinvent the business.
I committed to finding quiet time to partly withdraw from the day-to-day in order to focus on innovation in an industry that had gone unchanged for 40 years.
5. Help my community’s less fortunate.
Being empathetic and shedding a tear was good; mobilizing to have an impact, better.
As for what would define me, instead of work, I knew it would need to be something that gave me a personal feeling of invincibility, a feeling of, “if I can do this, I can do anything.” I started shopping for a year-defining project. The fitness part of my list meant it had to be of a physical nature.
The first obvious possibility was to climb Kilimanjaro, the highest mountain in Africa, along with Leslie. She and four girlfriends were scheduled to leave on January 1, ascend the 5,700-meter Tanzanian giant on the 5th, and reach the summit on the 11th, during the classic January full moon. The girls had been training since September.
I made the “ask” and was told this was a girls-only event.
Fast-forward: As it turned out, their expedition was a success; they all reached the summit and returned with a deep appreciation for Africa and its people and with the pride that can only come from preparing and making it to the top. The only snag turned out to be a nasty parasite that set up home in Leslie’s liver for eight months. Her liver had been compromised, causing digestive problems, lack of energy, and weight gain. She was unaware of the cause of all this. Once the problem was diagnosed, it took her a tremendous amount of effort and discipline to rid herself of “Fred,” as we all came to call it. The diet involved a heavy consumption of garlic, chlorophyll, psyllium, black walnuts, and parasite-removal pills, and cutting out the consumption of dairy, wheat, alcohol, sugars, and raw vegetables for four months. Despite this intensely difficult byproduct of her trip, one that was not atypical for African expeditions, Leslie wouldn’t have had it any other way.
What about running a marathon? I wondered. No, the deteriorating nature of our business required a more extreme option: climbing Everest, going to the North Pole, crossing the ocean in a sailboat, or cycling across the U.S. Of these, Everest was the most appealing. I had read the books and watched the movies. But the cost was prohibitive, at about $75,000, and Leslie was uncomfortable with the risks I would be taking, despite my assurances that I was worth more dead than alive. Everest also involved a full month of travel, which I deemed irresponsible.
My search for a defining experience led me back to a conversation with Norma Bastidas, who had sat next to me at a conference in Toronto earlier that fall. During a break we started talking about our extracurricular interests.
“I run ultra-marathons,” she said.
“Ugh! What’s that?” I replied.
“Foot races more than 250 kilometers in the least hospitable places on earth.”
“People do that?”
She said it was one of the fastest-growing sports among baby boomers and that she was running in the Gobi Desert in China in June 2009 to raise money for visually impaired people – her son having this affliction. In fact, Norma, during a sabbatical, would be running seven deserts on seven continents in seven months.
Besides being shocked that people did this and somehow survived, I was intrigued by the complexity of it all. Not that I didn’t believe her, but a few weeks later I had searched the Internet to see if this was real. Sure enough, there it was: the Gobi March, an open, international, unaided, 250-kilometer foot race in the Gobi Desert. The schedule calls for four approximately 40-kilometer days, then 80 kilometers on the fifth day. The sixth day is for catching up or resting, and the last day throws in a final 10 kilometers for good measure. Or, to put it another way: The event consisted of running six marathons in five days, and 10 kilometers on the final day, in untenable 45-degree-Celsius heat, in the windiest desert on earth, a mountainous area at the foot of the Himalayas climbing to 3,000 meters. It meant carrying your food, meds, clothes, and survival and sleeping gear on your back and sharing a tent with strangers. And, of course, running on sand or whatever else you came across in the desert.
The only requirements were a medical affidavit and the entrance fee.
It definitely met the ridiculous standard and I certainly wasn’t typecast for it. I had never run a marathon before. In fact, I didn’t really like running, nor did my body: My right knee’s ACL and MCL had each been reconstructed twice, and I thought the cartilage in the same knee was partly torn.
December 8, 2008
As usual, I was going through another sleepless night. I felt depressed and thought I was losing it. All I could see coming my way was more darkness and pain.
I had been there before, but this time it was different. I had done everything I could for the business; we had had the tough conversations at home about a new lifestyle. Now I needed to look after me. I needed something to move me in a healthy direction. Anything that could alter the path I was on. I couldn’t control the economy, my clients, or our revenue and was beginning to doubt myself.