Lost in Virginia

Have you ever been lost? I sure have! It's a scary thing ... not knowing where you are or how to get where you need to go.

I have a very vivid memory of getting lost in the hills of Virginia while riding mountain bikes with my friend, David. We didn't intend to get lost, obviously. We started off following two other avid moutain bikers who very quickly smoked us and left us to fend for ourselves. This being David's first time on a mountain bike we took things slowly for a bit (or maybe that was because we were totally out of shape). Somehow, we ended up in the middle of the movie Deliverance!! Scary ... isolated ... damp woods ... dirt & mud roads ... dogs chasing us ... no cell coverage ... kinda place. We did not want to stay there for any length of time, so we SHIFTED GEARS, literally! We kept on going FORWARD since we knew life behind us was NOT where we wanted to be. Eventually, the road became paved! Signs of civilization. At the fork, we made a CHOICE to go left ... hoping that if we made a few left turns, we would go in a circle.

We finally made it home ... back to the conference center ... alive, exhausted, relieved and with a GREAT story.

Consider this ... is your referral system lost? Do you need to shift gears? You probably needed to shift gears some time ago. Take a good look at your surroundings. Are you generating all the business that you can by word of mouth? Find your most profitable relationship and begin to move forward by further developing that relationship. You have choices to make and possible turns in the road ahead. Regardless, moving forward with your profitable relationships is much better than what you left behind.