Believe In Something

I am writing from LA tonight and I realize I am incredibly tired. Not the tired as in, I didn't get enough sleep last night, but the kind of tired that feels accumulated over the last year. It feels heavy and it feels difficult to remove or remedy.

I am realizing that taking a day trip to Dallas is not normal, and neither is sleeping in hotel beds more often than my own.

All of this makes me wonder - why the hell am I doing this? Sure, sales is a bit of a clusterfuck. It's a vicious cycle that keeps you moving for the next win and the next commission. But at the end of the day, I think I do it because I truly believe in what I'm selling. Cheesy? Absolutely. True? Absolutely. I believe that what I'm selling helps companies and is the best damn product out there. I had a meeting today that was heavily focused on competitive differentiation, and it was frustrating because the prospect's response to everything I said was, well competitor X says they can do it too. I had to work so hard to resist the urge to say, "Please just go with them. I'll talk to you again in 3 months." And it made me think to myself, damn, I'm actually pretty lucky to work on a product that really does something. It's not just smoke and mirrors and I actually care about the work.

I'm not sure what the point of this post is, except to say that believing in something is a powerful thing. It makes me get on planes every week and fly to weird places to try to convince people that they can and should do better.

I need a vacation. Any destination suggestions?