A few steps in The King’s shoes

Tunis airport is where I find myself right now as I write this post. I am in Tunisia for work, well I am on my way home now. Maybe let me let you in on what I kinda do for a living. I work for a company that manufactures spare parts for a certain industry. Now my job is to get sales for my company. You can call me a salesman. The little difference between me and the traditional salesman is that I do business development as well. I believe by now it will make sense to you that I get to travel a lot. The market that I am responsible for selling into is the whole of Africa. Yes I travel in the continent mostly. There is that odd out of the continent trip. I love the traveling and meeting new people and making business contacts and friends. Doing business in the industry that I work in is very challenging. One has to learn a lot of innovative ways to get to meet the right people and when you do, one has to find ways to get the business deals concluded. It is not the type of business that you wake up in the morning and go close a deal.

Now that I have set the stage for what I really want to talk to, let’s get straight to it. I like social media, more so Facebook. When I travel or I do my weekend activities, I like sharing pictures of those events. I like showing off what it is I am getting up to, well I am the one that’s there right? I stray. I get a lot of comments about how nice my job is because I get to go to all these places. I have it nice because I get to travel. Before I get into those comments, I would like to tell you what a great business trip to me is, yes I do get excited going to a country I have never been to, however the country and what it has to offer a tourist is not what I look forward to the most. I look forward to how well I can make doing business in that country easier. A great trip is for me making great contacts and having productive meetings that I can build on to eventually getting to closing a deal. What I am saying is this, when I then go out and see the country and all it has to offer, that is relationship building for me. I appreciate their country and not look down on them, people appreciate that.

When you see the lovely pictures that I share on Facebook, I am in a way advertising what the countries I visit have to offer. They get free publicity and they appreciate that. They take me to all nice places and even to those that are not in the tourist brochures. This is part of how I build relationships. I enjoy what I do. I am good at building relationships, I love traveling, I love adventure, so I guess you can see how this is a good fit for me. Someday in the near future I will want to do something else different probably, but the fundamentals of what a job must have for me to love it and work my butt off to be successful comes in to play when I choose a position. I don’t have to be always in a job that requires me to travel, I am learning how to save for trips so I can do that myself, so it can be an office job with a lot of people that I will have to work with and build professional relationships with and motivate them to perform at their best, I’ll still find that good feeling.

So yes I have a cool job when you look at it from the outside, I made the job cool, it has lots of stress and sometimes you feel like you will sweat blood. I made the choice to not let my work do that to me, I deal with a lot of challenges and I do my best to turn all that into something that will make the end of each day a day well spent. I am doing my best to master my destiny. In my journey to self-awareness I am discovering that there are many things that are within my control and all I need to do is really consider what it is I want and work hard on getting it realistically of cause. I’ve found a way to do my work and get out of it what it is taking out of me. I am not just giving, I am taking as well. 

With all that being said, maybe those who say that if you do what you love, you will never work a day in your life are full of sh*t or they are on to something. If you have a job, great, learn to get from it that which will make your heart smile, if you can’t find it, you are not a mountain, move. Yes the job market is not easy. Find innovative ways to get another job, find a way to get the job that you want. Heck start your own business. Ask yourself what the company you are looking to work for wants in the person they would employ in the position you want and go show them you are that person. You don’t have to wait for a job opening. There is power in networking. I cannot tell you how to do it because you have to find out for yourself, ask me specific questions and I will give you specific questions that will help you answer your specific questions.

Cairo is calling me by name, let me go have lunch with a friend of mine there.

The King AKA Coach H