For all of our trips, we start out by setting out a route. We try to pick four cities/towns, each in a different state, that are reasonable driving distances from each other. The longest drive we ever took between days was on a cold and snowy January day from Pueblo, Colorado to Garden City, Kansas (more than 4 hours!), but typically we do around two hours or do between stops. I’m excited about the upcoming trip, because it is in the part of the country where I have not spent much time – Alabama, the Florida Panhandle, and Mississippi.
Once we get the locations picked, the next step is to identify business owners to interview. On this trip, I was assigned to set the interview schedule for Pensacola. We try to get ideas and contacts from the local Chamber of Commerce – the folks at many Chambers across the country have been a great help in connecting with interesting companies and their owners. Our goal has been to cover a wide variety of types of businesses on our various trips. In Pensacola, for example, we have an metals manufacturer, a software firm and a seafood company, among others. Having a mix of different kinds of companies make the stories more relevant and useful – and shows that the strategy frameworks we are describing have universal application.
It is also great fun to learn about different parts of the country while preparing for the trips and visiting the locations. We definitely picked a good time to be making this trip – it looks like it will be sunny skies and temperatures in the mid-70s all week! A far cry from that cold day in Kansas, for sure…
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