I am leaving in an hour for my annual trek to the ISE show in Amsterdam. While I love Holland, having lived and worked there for a year, and while the ISE show has really developed in the last few years, I must admit I am dreading the trip. The good news is, I have a direct flight from Portland to Amsterdam. The bad news is, I will be sitting in my economy seat for 10 hours and 50 minutes. My butt hurts just thinking about it.

My colleagues are flying United, for the miles, but their flights just got scrambled so they will fly PDX - O'Hare - Frankfurt - Amsterdam. They'll be traveling 8 more hours, but perhaps the business class seats will make up for it. 

In a way, these business travel challenges are something of a metaphor for the journey of starting a businesss: In the best of cases, it takes a long time and is painful. In the more likely case, nothing will go as planned and the arrival will be invariably delayed, often through no cause of your own.

We at Vertigo Digital Displays are learning this lesson in spades as we enter a new year of our business "re-startup". After a tremendously successful Manhattan Showcase where we demoed our product and showed our high-brightness prototype to 17 prospects, we are slammed with RFPs and quote requests. Our European meetings with OOH media giants there encouraged us to believe we'd be as busy as we can get, beginning somewhere around Q3 (but we all know Europe takes the summer off, so I'm thinking September). We have wall-to-wall appointments scheduled for our Technology Suites at ISE, and have started booking similar meetings for our suite at DSE. But if we booked an order immediately, it would be April or May before we see any receipts from it...everything just takes soooo long.

At times like this, it's tempting to get a little panicky. Maybe think about re-jiggering the strategy, partner with companies and people you'd otherwise avoid, make bad deals for short-terms gains. Lose focus. I am going to do my best to avoid this trap.

Make no mistake, I'll be very busy on that 11 hour flight. Polishing up my deck, finishing my SID article, writing innumerable emails that will all be burped out on my arrival in AMS. I will squeeze every part of the balloon I can get my hands around in order to try and compress that time from now until the factory needs to add people and the bank balance carries another comma. I just wish it wouldn't take so long. Thank goodness I have that inflatable pillow to sit on, so maybe it won't be quite so painful....

As I write this, I am literally hours away from embarking upon the most rigorous and extensive travel period of my 25+ year career. I leave Portland, Ore. at 7:40 am tomorrow for London and Paris, returning Saturday night to Portland. My shortest trip to Europe ever. I am home for 36 hours then board a plan to Taipei and over the next three weeks go to Asia, the Middle East and end up in Amsterdam for my annual trip to ISE. I get home on Feb 6 after literally circling the globe only to have additional trips to NYC and Las Vegas before February is done.

When I share this with people (not to brag, but to psyche myself up), I get either "You're so lucky" or "Why on earth would you subject yourself to this?" Guess which of these is from the seasoned business traveler?

Well, we are now in 2010 and I have a number I need to hit. We need to get projects in the funnel and customers in the pipeline. While I have developed entire companies around direct response outbound marketing and call centers, this business is not like that. To do business with the big-boys of the Out Of Home industry, you need to be face-to-face. To close a deal in the Middle East, they need to meet you and break bread. And of course, if you want to meet 50 or 100 prospects in three days and show them what you've got, you must do the tradeshows.

So I am doing it. All of it. All in three and a half weeks. Why? Because I have a number to hit, and that's the best way to get the ball down the field fast. Travel to the customer, meet the customer, deliver the pitch, ask for the order, repeat.

For those of you out on the road with me, you know what I am talking about. If you are in London, Paris, Taipei, Tainan, Doha, Dubai, Amsterdam or Portland between now and February 5, drop me a note. I'll buy you a beer and we can talk about home.