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O P I N I O N
Too much of a good thing can lead to a crisis for you and your staff and dissatisfaction for your clients. Too much business development?
M arketing and business development are fickle things. The rules say you’re supposed to be doing them all the time, especially when your firm is at its busiest, because you need to continue to fill the pipeline, right? But when does it get to be just too much? When does delivering projects, engaging your staff, meeting new prospects, recruiting new team members, and selling more work turn into a crisis?
Kraig Kern
I just returned from my first vacation in more than two years. As an avid traveler, my wife and I usually take at least one epic vacation every year, sometimes two. But I hadn’t left my own city (except for work) since September 2019. Unknown to pretty much everyone, before departure, I had been experiencing severe neck pain, debilitating headaches, and general malaise for more than three months. I was worried that something was seriously wrong, but I’m notoriously stubborn about going to the doctor. Then something wonderful happened. By the third morning of my time out west, sitting on the balcony of our Airbnb drinking coffee
and overlooking a valley near Arches National Park in Utah, all of those issues disappeared. I felt better than I had in months. It was then I realized that all of the negative news, the fear of COVID, the apps on my phone, and the fact I had been running at 150 percent capacity at work since 2019 contributed to how I was feeling. In short, as someone who usually is healthy, I was experiencing classic symptoms of extreme stress and burnout, and it was affecting me mentally and physically. The PTO couldn’t have come at a better time. One could argue it might have saved my life.
See KRAIG KERN, page 4
THE ZWEIG LETTER DECEMBER 6, 2021, ISSUE 1419
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