Travel for Success

09/24/2026

Another objection I completely understand:

"Travel is expensive."

It certainly can be.

Flights.

Hotels.

Restaurants.

Rental cars.

Activities.

Take a family halfway around the world and you can spend a lot of money very quickly.

But that's not what I'm suggesting people do every six weeks.

One of the biggest misunderstandings about Travel For Success is assuming every trip has to be a vacation.

It doesn't.

The purpose is to periodically change your environment.

That creates a lot more possibilities.

Drive two hours to another city.

Turn a business trip into an extra day.

Attend a conference you've been meaning to attend.

Visit friends or family.

Work remotely from somewhere different.

Take a long weekend.

Combine business and personal travel when it makes sense.

The destination isn't the strategy.

Changing the environment is the strategy.

I think that's important because otherwise this philosophy becomes something only wealthy people can practice.

That's not what I wrote.

You don't need first class airfare.

You don't need a resort.

You don't need Europe.

You don't even necessarily need an airplane.

You need enough distance from your normal routine to interrupt it.

And here's another consideration.

We usually calculate the cost of going somewhere.

Hotel: $X.

Gas: $X.

Meals: $X.

But we rarely calculate the cost of never changing anything.

Burnout has a cost.

Bad decisions have a cost.

Weak relationships have a cost.

Lack of perspective has a cost.

Building a business that completely controls your life has a cost.

I'm not suggesting anyone spend money irresponsibly.

Quite the opposite.

Design the experience around what you can reasonably afford.

But don't assume intentional travel requires luxury.

Sometimes the best thing you can do is get in the car and go somewhere different for a couple of days.

09/23/2026

"I can't leave my business."

Of all the objections I've heard to the Travel For Success philosophy, this may be the most important one.

Because my response isn't:

"Leave anyway."

My response is:

"Why can't you?"

That's where the useful conversation begins.

Is there nobody else who can make decisions?

Does critical information exist only in your head?

Do customers only want to deal with you?

Are processes undocumented?

Does your team lack authority?

Do you have someone you don't trust?

Are you personally doing work someone else should be doing?

Or have you simply never tested what would happen if you weren't there?

Those are very different problems.

And staying at the office doesn't solve any of them.

It hides them.

If you genuinely cannot leave your company for several days, I'm not suggesting you book a flight tomorrow and hope for the best.

I'm suggesting you treat your inability to leave as information.

Start fixing the reasons.

Train someone.

Document the process.

Delegate the responsibility.

Establish authority.

Cross-train employees.

Create backup plans.

Develop leaders.

Then test it.

Leave for a day.

Then two.

Then several.

See what breaks.

Fix it.

Try again.

That's one of the biggest business lessons behind Travel For Success.

Travel isn't just the reward you get after building a better business.

Sometimes the desire to travel gives you a reason to build the business better.

Your goal shouldn't be disappearing.

Your goal should be creating an organization that doesn't require your constant physical presence to function.

That's not abandoning responsibility.

That's leadership.

09/22/2026

"I'd love to travel more, but I don't have time."

I understand that objection.

I also think it's worth examining.

Because here's what I've learned:

You probably aren't going to find the time.

There isn't going to be a Tuesday when you suddenly open your calendar and discover an unused week sitting there.

Business doesn't work that way.

Life doesn't work that way.

Something will always compete for the time.

A client.

A deal.

An employee.

A property.

A deadline.

A family obligation.

An opportunity.

Another problem.

If your plan is to travel "when things slow down," you may be waiting a very long time.

The way I've made travel part of my life is by intentionally putting it on the calendar.

Sometimes it's business travel.

Sometimes it's a conference.

Sometimes it's personal.

Sometimes I combine the two.

And it doesn't always mean traveling halfway around the world.

The principle is much simpler:

Periodically change your environment.

A few days in another city can do it.

A road trip can do it.

A conference can do it.

Working somewhere different for several days can do it.

The point isn't accumulating passport stamps.

The point is deliberately interrupting your routine.

That's an important distinction in Travel For Success.

I don't have unlimited time either.

I have businesses, clients, properties, deals, meetings and responsibilities.

So I don't wait until I "have time."

I make the decision that certain things deserve time.

We do that with everything that's genuinely important to us.

Maybe the question isn't:

"Do I have time?"

Maybe it's:

"Is this important enough for me to intentionally make time?"

Those are very different questions.

09/18/2026

If I could sit down with my 30-year-old self, I wouldn't tell him to work harder.

He already knew how to do that.

I'd tell him something different.

Don't keep postponing life until you've earned the time to live it.

When you're younger, it's easy to think in stages.

I'll do that after I make more money.

After the business grows.

After this deal closes.

After things settle down.

After I reach the next goal.

Then you reach the goal.

And another one appears.

That's the nature of ambitious people.

There's always something else to build.

Something else to accomplish.

Something else to chase.

I don't think there's anything wrong with that.

I still have goals.

I still want to grow.

I'm certainly not interested in sitting around waiting for life to happen.

But I've learned that you have to build the experiences into the journey.

Not after it.

That's part of why travel has become so important to me.

Every several weeks, changing environments creates a break in the normal rhythm.

Sometimes it's business.

Sometimes it's a conference.

Sometimes it's personal.

Sometimes it's a combination.

But it reminds me that life isn't something that begins after the work is finished.

Because here's what I know now that I didn't fully understand at 30:

The work is never finished.

There will always be another deal.

Another problem.

Another opportunity.

Another goal.

Time doesn't wait for you to complete the list.

That's probably one of the biggest reasons I wrote Travel For Success.

Yes, the book is about productivity, leadership, delegation, perspective and business.

But underneath all of it is something much simpler:

Build a successful life while you're building the successful business.

Don't wait until someday.

Someday has a habit of moving.

09/17/2026

Some of the most valuable things that have happened during my travels weren't on the agenda.

That's one reason I continue attending conferences and professional meetings around the country.

Yes, I go for the education.

Yes, I go to conduct business.

Yes, sometimes I'm there to speak or participate in meetings.

But there's another part that's harder to measure.

The conversation before the meeting starts.

Coffee with someone you haven't seen in six months.

Dinner after the scheduled events are over.

Meeting somebody from another market who sees a problem completely differently than you do.

Someone mentioning an opportunity that wasn't even the reason you were there.

Those conversations compound over time.

You build relationships.

You learn how people in other markets operate.

You hear ideas you wouldn't hear sitting in your own office.

You become exposed to opportunities you couldn't have scheduled because you didn't know they existed.

That's something travel has taught me.

We like to believe opportunity is something we can plan.

Put the meeting on the calendar.

Make the call.

Schedule the appointment.

Send the proposal.

Those things matter.

But sometimes opportunity comes from simply putting yourself in a different room with different people.

That's why I don't measure the value of travel only by what I accomplished during the trip.

Sometimes the return shows up months—or years—later through a relationship that began with a conversation I never planned to have.

I discuss networking and relationships in Travel For Success because getting outside your normal environment doesn't just change what you see.

It changes who you meet.

And who you meet can change where you go next.

09/16/2026

I didn't come up with the idea for Travel For Success because I studied productivity theory.

It happened almost the opposite way.

I lived it first.

Then I eventually recognized the pattern.

Over the years I've built businesses, invested in real estate, negotiated deals, worked with property owners, attended conferences, spoken professionally and traveled around the country.

I've had good years.

I've had difficult years.

I've made good decisions.

I've made some I wouldn't make again.

And somewhere along the way I noticed something.

When I periodically got away from my normal environment, I came back seeing things differently.

Sometimes it was a business problem.

Sometimes it was an opportunity.

Sometimes I realized I needed to delegate something.

Sometimes I realized I needed to stop doing something.

And sometimes it had nothing to do with business.

I simply returned with a better appreciation for my life and the people in it.

Eventually the pattern became too obvious for me to ignore.

So I became more intentional about it.

Leave periodically.

Change the environment.

Meet different people.

See different places.

Create some distance.

Think.

Then come home and apply what I learned.

That's where the book came from.

Not theory.

Experience.

And I want to be clear about something:

I haven't perfected any of this.

I'm still building businesses.

Still solving problems.

Still catching myself getting too involved.

Still learning to delegate better.

Still figuring out what deserves my time.

Maybe that's why I felt the book was worth writing.

These aren't lessons from someone who has everything figured out.

They're lessons from someone who has been doing this long enough to recognize a few patterns.

And some of those patterns changed the way I live.

09/16/2026

This week of travel we can drive. Louisville for Loder than Life then Indianapolis for Society of Exchange Counselors.

09/15/2026

Long before I owned businesses or sold real estate, I served in the United States Navy Nuclear Power Program aboard a fast attack submarine.

That experience shaped a lot of how I think today.

One lesson that stayed with me was the importance of systems.

On a submarine, you don't build an operation around one person being the only one who knows what to do.

People are trained.

Procedures matter.

Responsibilities are understood.

Knowledge has to extend beyond one individual.

Years later, I started building businesses.

And like a lot of entrepreneurs, I sometimes violated the very principle I had learned years earlier.

I became the system.

Something needed done?

I knew how.

A decision needed made?

Bring it to me.

A problem came up?

I'd handle it.

That works when you're small.

It can even make you feel pretty important.

But it doesn't scale very well.

And it certainly doesn't create freedom.

Travel has repeatedly exposed this to me.

Every time I leave, I'm essentially testing the systems.

What still depends on me?

What information exists only in my head?

What decision does someone else need authority to make?

What process needs to be documented?

Who needs more training?

The Navy taught me the importance of systems.

Business ownership taught me how easy it is to forget that lesson.

And travel keeps reminding me.

That's one of the reasons Travel For Success isn't really a book about vacations.

It's about building your business—and your life—so you aren't required to personally hold everything together.

That's a lesson I've been learning for a very long time.

09/14/2026

Let me ask you a different question today.

Not:

"Can you leave your business?"

Ask:

"What would change if you knew you could?"

Think about that.

If you knew your company could operate without your physical presence every day...

Would you visit people you've been meaning to see?

Attend more conferences?

Spend more time with your spouse?

Take that trip you've been postponing?

Explore another market?

Work from somewhere different for a few days?

Spend more time thinking about the future instead of dealing with today?

Maybe you'd simply breathe a little easier knowing you had the option.

That's the part of this philosophy I don't want people to miss.

Travel is the mechanism.

Freedom is the bigger idea.

Not freedom from responsibility.

Freedom created by building better systems, developing capable people, setting priorities and becoming intentional about your time.

I've spent decades building businesses, working in real estate, investing, traveling, attending conferences, making mistakes and figuring some of this out along the way.

I certainly didn't have it figured out at 30.

I'm still learning.

But one thing I understand much better today is that success and freedom aren't automatically the same thing.

You can build a very successful business that completely owns your calendar.

I don't think that's the goal.

I want successful businesses.

But I also want a life.

Relationships.

Experiences.

Travel.

Time to think.

Time with people I care about.

Memories.

That's ultimately why I wrote Travel For Success.

The book isn't really asking you to take more vacations.

It's asking a much bigger question:

Are you intentionally building a business and a life that give you the freedom to leave?

If that question hits a nerve, I think you'll get something from the book.

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09/13/2026

I don't think most successful business owners need another productivity hack.

We already know how to work.

We know how to make lists.

We know how to schedule meetings.

We know how to answer emails.

We know how to push through when we're tired.

We've been doing it for decades.

The bigger challenge is figuring out whether we're spending all that effort in the right places.

That's different.

A perfectly organized day spent doing the wrong things is still a poorly spent day.

I've become much more interested in leverage than activity.

Which decision could eliminate ten future decisions?

Which employee could take over something I've been doing?

Which system would prevent the same problem from happening repeatedly?

Which opportunity deserves more attention?

Which opportunity should I walk away from?

What should I stop doing entirely?

Those are strategic questions.

And they're difficult to answer when you're buried inside the machine every day.

That's why changing my environment became useful.

It creates enough separation for me to look at the business instead of constantly operating inside it.

That's a major distinction in Travel For Success.

This isn't a book about getting more things done.

I'm much more interested in helping people think about whether those things need to be done at all.

Before you improve your to-do list, look at what's on it.

Maybe the breakthrough isn't doing everything faster.

Maybe it's deciding what shouldn't be there.