Ten Lessons Hiking the Inca Trail Teaches You About Your Business

 By Jim Verdonik

I'm an attorney with Ward and Smith PA.  I also write a column about business and law for American Business Journals, have authored multiple books and teach an eLearning course for entrepreneurs.  You can reach me at JFV@WardandSmith.com or JimV@eLearnSuccess.com.  Or you can check out my eLearning course at http://www.elearnsuccess.com/start.aspx?menuid=3075

or http://www.youtube.com/user/eLearnSuccess or purchase my books at  http://www.amazon.com/Jim-Verdonik/e/B0040GUBRW

What are you doing this summer?

I'm analyzing business case studies.  My first was in Peru on a four-day hike along the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu with my daughter (JJ).

I have a theory that all things in life can teach you how to run your business better.

Why?

Because business is about people.  Psychology is the fundamental tool of business.  The more you learn about people (customers, competitors, vendors, advisers, bosses, employees and contractors) the more tools you have to be successful.

That's why everything we do in life can teach us valuable business lessons.  Of course, you can't learn anything, if you walk around wearing a blindfold or keep yourself locked in a closet.  You have to get out into the world and look and listen to learn anything.  And remember, that talking only helps you learn, if you stimulate other people to talk to you.  Monopolizing the conversation impairs your ability to learn.  Maybe that's why people who talk continuously seem to know so little.

So, what lessons did I learn from looking and listening on my journey into pre-Columbian South America along the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu?

But before I answer that question, let me note that this article focuses on the struggles of the trip, because business is about facing challenges, winning some and minimizing your losses when you aren’t successful.  Despite the challenges of the trip, we also had a lot of fun. 

·         We saw glacier covered mountains that looked like Switzerland. 

·         We walked through lush rain forests where the tree canopy blocked the sky. 

·         We walked along mountain streams where the sound of the rushing water energized our spirits.

·         We climbed in solitude over the ruins of an ancient civilization scattered along the Inca Trail far from the crowds at Machu Picchu.

·         We met wonderful people from Peru and around the world.

·         We enjoyed the five star central square in the former Inca capital of Cusco that matches the best town squares in Tuscany and France.

But we often learn more from our struggles than from our pleasures.  So, let's jump into the challenges of this trek and the lessons these challenges teach us.

Business Rule Number 1 - Humility. 

I like to think of myself as a pretty fit guy for my age.  Six hours of exercise a week and a decent muscle mass index.

What could be so hard about trekking 26 miles in four days when you regularly run 5 miles?

Alas, three things conspire to make the Inca Trail more difficult than your typical 26-mile hike:

·         Altitude – thin air literally knocks you on your butt.

·         Backpacks – extra weight slows you down and tires you out.

·         Stairs – the Inca Trail has thousands of stairs made of stones.  Some of the stairs are six inches high.  Others are a foot tall or more.  One afternoon we descended approximately 3,000 stairs.

Finaly Reaching the Top of
Dead Woman's Pass (13,776 Feet) 
(Day 2)
 

The combination of these three factors meant a life-long exerciser like me had to bow to nature and limp along as best I could.  At the end of days 2 and 3 of the hike, I had just enough gas left in my tank to crawl into my tent to sleep, wake up for dinner and then force myself to eat to refuel for the next day's journey.  I would say that days 2 and 3 on the Inca Trail have roughly the equivalent effect on your body as running two marathons on consecutive days.  I lost 5 pounds in four days.

 Of course, you face similar challenges when you start and run a business.  It's usually much more difficult than you think.  Whatever preparations you make, circumstances are likely to make your business journey harder than you trained for.  The American military has a slogan: "Train like we fight.  Fight like we train."  That's the primary difference between professionals and amateurs. 

We amateurs (whether in business or hiking) have to deal with our unexpected struggles with humility.  Don't bother entering the contest, if you have to finish first all the time.  Sometimes, surviving to start again the next day is victory.

Business Rule Number 2 - Learning Humility Clears the Way for Making Progress.

My new found humility reminded of the connection between failure and success and the concept of "Creative Destruction," which Joseph Schumpeter (an Austrian-American economist) popularized in Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (1942).  "Creative Destruction" describes how periodic down turns in the business cycle clear the way for economic innovation.

So it is with destruction of the body caused by a four-day war of attrition hiking the Inca Trail.  Instead of big ideas that have no connection with one another, you focus on very simple physical actions that are necessary to complete the goal of finishing the Inca Trail in one piece.  Here's what the last two miles of our climb to Dead Woman's Pass was like:

·         Walk  25 to 50 yards uphill toward the pass.

·         Rest.

·         Walk another 25 to 50 yards.

·         Rest.

·         Repeat dozens of times for approximately two miles until you achieve your goal.

In the luxury of our civilization, business leaders often fall to the temptation that big thoughts are the path to overnight success.  That's true in some cases, but its like winning the lottery.  Most often, success results from successfully implementing a strategy over and over and over again.  Humility helps you to discipline yourself to do that.

But, what about creativity and innovation? 

How does plodding along the trail step by step spark creativity and innovation?

Enjoying the Top of Second Mountain Pass (Day 3)

Physical activity has some things in common with meditation.  Focusing for a long time on a limited number of physical actions frees up parts of your mind to become open to bigger concepts.  By focusing on avoiding twisting your ankle on each rock step as you walk, you eventually begin to understand how it all fits together. 

Stopping and resting provides opportunities to look around you at the mountain passes, the glacier covered mountain peaks, the lush rain forests and the mountain streams. When every step is a battle as you struggle to suck in more oxygen from the thin air, you appreciate what you are seeing and feeling more than if you are taking a casual stroll.

Business Rule Number 3 - What Goes Up Must Come Down. 

Having reached the summit of Dead Woman's Pass at 13,776 feet above sea level, we celebrated and rested for about twenty minutes and then began the process of descending the other side of the pass.  Over the next day and a half, we descended between six and seven thousand feet in altitude primarily by climbing down several thousand stone steps.

This raises the issue that many successful businesses fail to consider.  What is success?  Once you achieve success, what do you do next?  You can't stay at the top of the pass forever.

·         It's too cold.

·         The air is too thin.

·         You can't carry enough food and water on your way up that you can afford to linger too long at the top.

Map Showing Altitude Gain and Loss

This is an issue many new businesses face after achieving initial success.  How do you consolidate your success to withstand the inevitable counterattack by competitors?  What's your exit strategy?  If you don't plan and execute your descent carefully, you and your business could wander aimlessly and fall off a cliff in the middle of the night.

                                           



 

Business Rule Number 4 – Leadership Means Creating Teams that Work Together

The best leaders create teams where team members help one another.  Our guide Richard was such a leader.  Richard has been through the Inca Trail literally hundreds of times during his ten -year career as a guide.  He could probably do the entire 26 miles of the Inca Trail in two days by himself walking backwards.  But sprinting through the Inca Trail alone isn't his job.  His job was to get six Americans, two Argentines and one Brazilian and their porters safely and efficiently through the four-day journey in the wilderness. 

Richard is a professional guide.  He often referred to the Inca Trail his office.

The first thing a professional like Richard acknowledges is that it's more a one-man job.  To achieve the goal, Richard had to motivate these total strangers to work as a team to help one another. 

Richard wasted no time in building teamwork.  It started with teaching the group a magic phrase.  Sorry, I can't tell you the magic phrase.  Richard is entitled to his trade secrets.  Then, as soon as we started the first and the easiest day of the trek, Richard repeatedly talked about how we were all a family.  Richard continually reinforced the sense of family – especially at meal times.

The net result of all this psychological preparation by Richard was that by day 2 of our trek which was the most physically demanding part of our trek as we gained 3,000 feet in elevation, the strongest hikers in the group often waited for the slowest hikers to catch up.  That gave us slower hikers the encouragement we needed to complete our journey.

So, what happens with your business team?  Do your best performers race ahead to maximize their compensation?  Or do your best people teach other team members how to improve their performance?

If your people aren't functioning as a team, whose fault is it?  Did you hire a bunch of selfish people?  Or did you hire normal people, but you failed to take on the difficult leadership role of building a team that works together? 

Our Porters Made It All Possible
Carrying Tents, Food Etc.

You might ask yourself: "Why should I encourage my best performers to slow down a little and help other team members?"  Let's look at this from a strictly return on investment (ROI) point of view.  If one of the hikers in Richard's group gives in to altitude sickness or just to being tired and decides he can't complete the trek, it creates a problem for the whole team.  You can't just let a sick person wander home without help from the middle of a wilderness.  You might send a porter or two to help them get back to civilization safely.  That leaves you with fewer porters to carry the tents, food and other items.  The whole expedition suffers when you start losing the weaker members.

Of course, your business isn't an expedition.  But by encouraging your best performers to take a little time to share their experience and expertise, you can improve the overall performance of your entire team.  You do the math.  If your top performer decreases output by 10%, because of time sent helping others, but nine other people on your team improve their output 10% each, is your business stronger or weaker? 

Hiking Team from
Argentina, Brazil and USA
Led By Peruvian Guides and Porters
Refuels at Mealtime

To make this work, you have to promote people who are good teachers.  Some people can't transfer their skills to others.  And you have to compensate your top performers for taking the time to transfer their skills and help other team members perform better.  In business, you get what you pay for.  If you only pay people for their individual performance, don't expect your people to divert their time and effort to things you aren't willing to pay for – like helping their teammates improve.  They logically assume that your nice words about teamwork are just that – nice words.  Compensation plans determine what you truly value.  What do your business' compensation plans communicate to your people about what you and your busininess.

Business Rule Number 5 – One Technology Leads to other Technologies.

When you are climbing up and down thousands of stairs built five or six hundred years ago, you sometimes think about the people who built all these stairs.  I won't tell you everything I thought about the Incas and their thousands of stairs.  My mother taught me if you can't say something nice about the dead, don't say anything.

But facing all those stone stairs, you naturally ask yourself the question: WHY?

Why would people spend so much time and effort building so many stairs on the sides of mountains?

The Incas were empire builders.  They wanted ways to connect their thousand mile long empire and effectively govern it from their capital in Cusco.  Roads allowed the Incas to transfer people and food from different parts of their vast empire when needed, including in battling neighboring tribes.  So, roads gave the Incas a competitive advantage over rival tribes.

But why build all the stairs?  Why not build roads and paths with gradual inclines like in Europe? 

The answer is a good example of how one technology or tool influences the other technologies and tools we create.

Stone Steps Along Inca Trail

The First of 3,000 Down (Day 3)

The Incas had no animals like oxen, mules and horses that were strong enough to pull carts and wagons like they did in Europe.  South America's famous llamas just don't have the strength to pull heavy carts and wagons up mountain roads.  If you don't have carts and wagons and animals to pull them, roads that have gradual inclines aren't a necessity.  So, the absence of some technologies or tools (like animals and wagons with wheels), influenced what types of roads the Incas built.

Is your business repeating the mistakes the Incas made?  Is your business investing too much in infrastructure that will soon become outdated as technology changes?  Stay ahead of the technology curve.  It's not enough to just know the technologies that are available today.  Make sure the technology your business will invest in today either will last a long time or is modular and can be replaced or upgraded at low cost.  Someone in your business or a consultant needs to know the technologies that are being developed that could make your current business infrastructure as obsolete as roads made of steps in a world that moves on wheels.

Business Rule Number 6 – Unknown Competitors will Blind Side You and Everyone Wants to be Part of a Winning Team.

By the year 1,500 AD, the Inca Empire had been expanding for almost three centuries.  The Incas developed a civilization that was clearly stronger than those of neighboring tribes.

The Incas were top dogs - like IBM was in 1980 and Microsoft was in 1995.  Other tribes concluded it was in their self-interest to cooperate with the Incas.

Alas, being better than the competitors you know about doesn't guaranty lasting success of either empires or of businesses.

In 1526, the Spanish landed on the coast of northern Peru and Ecuador.  By 1533 the Spanish had captured the Inca capital of Cusco and by the 1570s the last vestiges of Inca rule over their vast empire had evaporated.  The Incas built a centrally controlled empire.  The individual parts of the empire were unable to survive and couldn't effectively contest Spanish domination. 

Places like Machu Picchu weren't conquered by the Spanish.  They were abandoned by the Incas, because they no longer served a useful purpose.  Without an empire and the Incas now lacked the resources to sustain them.  So, Machu Picchu simply disappeared for several centuries.

This isn't unusual with either empires or businesses.  Both often accumulate non-productive assets during their rise to the top that quickly become unsustainable deadweights as they decline.  Big corporate headquarters and staff have to be dismantled.

Inca Ruins Far From Machu Picchu
A Civilzation Gone With the Wind
 

The business lesson we learn from this is that large companies like empires can simply slowly whither way, because they were designed to win contests against their existing competitors.  When a new competitor surfaces, the new competitor can sometimes change the rules by which the market operates.  So, what seems like a safe and stable business can sometimes fall off a steep cliff with little warning:

·         Kodak dominated film and inexpensive non-digital cameras.  Kodak didn't disappear because someone else made better film or better non-digital cameras.  Customers simply chose new digital products.  Why didn't Kodak dominate digital cameras?  Because Kodak made a lot more money selling and developing film than they made from selling their cheap cameras.  So, the film part of Kodak fought digital cameras rather than jumping on board the new wave.

·         IBM was the master of mainframe computers – which until 1970 were the only type of computers.  But IBM had to expand into consulting services as PCs began to penetrate the business computer market.  Then, as PC manufacturing profitability faded, because the value was in the software and semiconductors that made PCs work, IBM sold its PC division.  IBM shows that change doesn't inevitably lead to disaster.  The decisions you make about how you react to change are important and can lead to greater success or to destruction.

·         Microsoft rode the wave of PCs.  But PC sales are declining and prices are falling.  Will Microsoft follow Kodak into oblivion?  Or will Microsoft adapt and change like IBM did?  Stay tuned to find out.

·         Apple, Google and Facebook are riding the wave of tablets and smart phones that use the Internet to allow people to stay in touch all the time.  But who knows how long this wave will last?  Will the next wave cause these giants to disappear like the Incas?  Or will these giants adapt to the next new wave?

But how does this affect you and your business?  You don't have an empire like the Incas and your business is like a microbe compared to Microsoft, Apple and Google.

If these big companies wrestle with the possibility of extinction caused by an ever changing market environment, imagine how these changes affect your much smaller business.  The big boys are like ocean liners.  They cruise through the little waves that rock your small boat.  Much smaller market changes affect your business every day.  Which change is a killer wave for your business?  Which changes represent new opportunities for your business?

So, let's remember that like the Incas, being the best at something doesn't guaranty long-term success or even survival.  Each empire and each business faces existential challenges where the life and death of the empire or business depends on adapting to a changing environment that is being influenced by new competitors and new technologies. 

And you often aren't aware that you are facing an existential threat until it's too late.  We don't have radar systems for businesses that sound an alarm when an existential threat approaches.  Understanding when you are facing such a threat to your business requires market research and analysis.  The Incas probably didn't think that the few hundred Spanish soldiers who arrived on the Pacific coast of South America were an existential threat.  How could a few hundred soldiers threaten the Inca Empire that is estimated to have had a population of approximately 15 million?

The Spanish might have seemed only like an annoying fly to the big Inca llama, but the Incas forgot a basic rule of both business and of empires – everyone wants to be part of the winning team. 

Entire tribes who had been conquered by the Incas or otherwise coerced into joining the empire defected to the Spanish, because the Spanish looked like winners. 

The modern business equivalent is today's software application developers, who migrate from one software operating system or hardware platform to another.  The big systems and platform operators need the smaller applications developers to make their systems and platforms more useful to consumers.  But the applications developers don't want to invest in applications that only work on losing software/hardware platforms.  The applications developers constantly evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the bigger systems and platform companies and will abandon a losing system or platform just like the Inca's allies switched sides to the Spanish. 

That's one reason why the big companies try to grab the headlines with new product announcements at industry trade shows.  Everyone wants to look like a winner to retain their current allies and attract additional allies.

Maybe, after three centuries of domination, the Incas forgot this basic rule of empires and business.

Don't let it happen to your business.

Business Rule Number 7 – Resources have Flexible Values.

How much is a bottle of Gatorade worth?

When you hike along the Inca trail, Gatorade triples in price compared to what you would pay in a town outside the Inca Trail.

Several factors affect the price of Gatorade.  The first is obvious.  Someone has to carry the Gatorade to a remote location.  So, you need to factor in the cost of labor for transportation.  The second is equally obvious.  The deeper into the Inca Trail you progress, the fewer competitors there are selling Gatorade, or anything else.  It’s a seller's market.  Third, after two days of drinking only boiled water, Gatorade magically transforms from a mundane grocery store item to a semi-precious liquid luxury.

So, you need know the market niche you are trying to target like the back of your hand.  No detail about these market niches is too unimportant to master.  Start with the basic questions and drill down from there:

·         Are you selling a commodity that can be purchased for a lower price a few doors down the block or a few clicks away on the Internet?

·         Or are you selling something that is unique and whose value customers readily acknowledge?

A lot of good businesses sell commodities.  They can achieve high volume sales.  So, there's nothing inherently wrong with commodities.

The business rule is to know whether you are in a commodity business or a premium margin business.  Don't expect to be able to charge premium prices, if you are in a commodities business.  Margins are often razor thin and customer loyalty lasts only as long as you meet or beat the prices your competitors are offering.

 But even commodities change in value depending on the market niche where you are selling them. 

The Inca Trail is a geographic market niche or sub-market that allows sellers to charge premium prices for what is normally a commodity low margin product.  That's one reason why you should always conduct in depth market research.  Keep drilling into market data until you find the niches and sub-markets where you can generate higher margins.  This may mean changing your basic product to make it useful to new users, or combining a product with a service, or it could be a geographic market that is too small for big competitors to care about.  Because the volume of customers hiking the Inca Trail isn't big enough to attract a Wal-Mart, local entrepreneurs are able to seize a high margin opportunity for what is normally a low margin commodity product.  

By the way, Gatorade was a sufficiently valuable commodity that a fellow trekker and I made a bet for a bottle of Gatorade.  It was sweet sucking on my winnings all afternoon instead of just drinking boiled water.

Business Rule Number 8 – Averages Don't Have Much Practical Value in Business Strategy.

The Inca Trail probably averages about six feet in width.  But in a few parts of the trail, it narrows to three to four feet.  For some reason, the narrowest parts of the trail usually seem to be adjacent to the highest cliffs.

Average Trail Width

If you are hiking along a cliff, the fact that the trail averages six feet over its entire length doesn't really help you very much.  You still only have three feet of usable space.  If you go beyond that three feet in that one spot, you drop like a rock several hundred feet to an untimely death.

So it is with business.  The average price in your market doesn't matter in any individual sales opportunity.  Focusing on the "average customer" in large markets is the lazy man's path the business failure.

Each customer has its own value point.

Value is usually a mix of price + quality + service. 

What weight each customer assigns to each variable determines whether they are a good match for your business.  Some customers think price is the only important thing.  Others consider price when they make purchase decisions, but may be willing to pay a premium for reliability or fast service. 

The key to any sale is to understand how each individual customer weighs each part of the value equation and how your product or service meets each of these value criteria.  Businesses that design products and services that match the value equations of specific target customer groups who value reliability and quality services win the best customers who are willing to pay premium prices.  Brand loyalty is also usually higher than with customers who make purchasing decisions based solely on price.  

Which approach describes your business - commodities and low prices or premium products and services?

Know your business and make decisions accordingly, but offering products and services to meet the "average" for the market as a whole may mean that you don't win sales from any actual customers.  There may not even be an "average customer."  Then, your business will be like the trekker who is theoretically safe and sound standing on an average six foot wide trail, but who falls to his death on the part of the trail that is only three or four feet wide.

Business Rule Number 9 –Don't Make Important Decisions Hastily Just Because People Want a Quick Decision.

We talked about how dangerous to is to base your business on averages.  Now, let's consider how dangerous it is to make instant decisions in a hurry when you are under stress o
r other adverse circumstances.

On the Inca Trail, the porters who carry the tents, food and other camping equipment always have the right of way.  Whether the porters are going uphill or down, they fly past us ordinary hikers while carrying heavy loads.  Our job was to get out of their way.

So, when a hiker sees or hears porters coming, they tell other hikers in their group and we all step back and hug the mountain side of the trail to allow the porters to pass.  After three days of hiking, stepping back to allow the porters to pass became an automatic response to someone saying the word "porters."

Third Mountain Pass
Above the Clouds (Day 3)
It's a Long Way Down

Automatic responses can be dangerous when you are hiking a narrow trail, are tired from lack of sleep and are somewhat mentally impaired from breathing very thin air.  At one point on the third day of our journey, a fellow trekker shouted "porters."  My daughter and I were about 30 feet away from him.  As we stepped back to hug the mountain, we saw our fellow trekker step back too.  The only problem was that his back was facing the cliff, not the mountain.  So, taking one step back left him with only one foot on the trail, the other foot firmly planted in thin air over a several hundred foot cliff and the weight of his backpack moving his center of gravity to the part of his body that was perched over thin air.  The second or two that it took him to regain his balance and restore both feet to the trail seemed like an eternity.

So, our business lesson is that when you are under stress, take a little time to think before you make important decisions.  Don't let anyone push you into making a rushed decision until you have insulated yourself from stressful conditions – especially if you are tired and feeling a bit dizzy from the altitude.  It could be a life or death decision for your business.

Business Rule Number 10 – Don't Think Every New Idea is a Great New Business.

When travelling, we often encounter new experiences that we think are business opportunities.  One reason for this phenomenon is that bringing home a business idea is a way to psychologically prolong your vacation or adventure.  Recognize that you are subject to this natural desire not to fully get back to reality.  This often causes some people jump to the conclusion that, because something exists in one country, it would make a good business to start when they go home.

Local cuisine is a good example.  While some cuisines have travelled well – like sushi and burritos and pizza – there are reasons why some other cuisines remain local delicacies.  A national dish of Peru is a good example.  Guinea Pig is a popular Peruvian dish.  They multiply like crazy, can be raised virtually anywhere, are a good source of protein and taste good.  (No, Guinea Pig doesn't taste like chicken.  The closest taste I have had is pigeon).

But don't bet your life savings trying to become the Colonel Sanders of Guinea Pig restaurants.  Those little heads staring back at you on the plate are a big downer for many people.

There's a big painting of The Last Supper in a Cathedral in the former Inca capital of Cusco.  The painting includes some local Peruvian deviations from da Vinci's famous work.  One such localism is that on the table there's a Guinea Pig lying on a platter as the main course.  Anyone who has eaten Guinea Pig knows that it would take a miracle for one Guinea Pig to feed twelve hungry Apostles – there is more skin and bones than meat on a Guinea Pig.  It's just too much work to harvest the meat to make it worthwhile for most Americans.

I lost five pounds in four days on the Inca Trail.  So, in theory you could market Inca Trail weight loss programs.  The problem with that business plan is that the people who most need to lose weight would probably die from heart attacks, if they trekked the Inca Trail.

Food and exercise are two lifestyle types of businesses that entrepreneurs often fall in love with.  The problem is that falling in love causes people to shut down the critical thinking parts of their brains.  That explains the existence of entire industries devoted to fad diets and magic exercise regimens.  Some people just can't get enough of food and exercise fads.  They often start businesses on the assumption that everyone will be as excited about their newly discovered product or service as they are.  Woe unto their friends and relatives who express skepticism while they are in this state of heightened excitement about their new business idea.

Most lifestyle businesses related to food, diet and exercise open with fanfare and quietly close a few years later, because the business' founders are more interested on the lifestyle than with doing the critical analysis required to determine how many other people will be equally excited and for how long.

It's easy to fall to the temptation of continuing to walk in the fog of continuing vacation than to face the realities of business.  But walking along foggy cliffs especially at night is dangerous business, which we learned as we ended our trek on a foggy pre-dawn hike along mountain cliffs above Macchu Picchu.

The Sun Gate At Dawn Above Machu Picchu
Became the Fog Gate (Day 4)

Despite the Anticipation of Seeing Sunrise over Macchu Picchu, the Fog Didn't Dissappoint our Hiking Team

Our Journey Together Was Incredible





So, there we have the top ten business lessons we learn from hiking the Inca Trail for four days to Machu Picchu.

Thanks to my trail buddies for teaching me all these things and helping me to survive the trek so I can share what they taught me.

·         Richard Castillo (Peru) (Guide) and Jose Luis (Peru) (Guide), Seven Porters and one Cook

·         Rodrigo Rossini (Brazil)  (Check out Rodrigo's documentary video of our trek at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nR9xXAWsEE )

·         Alejandro Kulhawy (Argentina) and Ana Kiehr (Argentina)

·         Ari Rubin (USA) and Brian Moen (USA)

·         Michael Hughes (USA) and Tom McGee (USA)

·         Jessica (JJ) Verdonik (USA)
 

As a final personal note, I would like to thank my daughter JJ for climbing to Dead Woman's pass despite waking up that morning with altitude sickness.  No father has ever received a better present from a daughter than the thousands of feet you climbed despite the adverse conditions.

If you would like to learn more about learning how to grow your business or other issues important to your success, you can reach me at JFV@WardandSmith.com or JimV@eLearnSuccess.com.  Or you can check out my eLearning course at http://www.elearnsuccess.com/start.aspx?menuid=3075

or http://www.youtube.com/user/eLearnSuccess or purchase my books at http://www.amazon.com/Jim-Verdonik/e/B0040GUBRW

"http://player.vimeo.com/video/53287764?title=0&byline=0&portrait=0&badge=0"