Desirable Difficulties

The best things you'll ever build will also be the hardest.

As I write this, I'm less than 24 hours removed from co-hosting the most recent PromoCruise. For those unfamiliar, it's an event where we take sixty branded merchandise suppliers and distributors – along with their plus ones – on a cruise, aiming not only to change how we network in the promotional products industry but also to elevate it by emphasizing the importance of relationships.

This is where I would typically discuss the epic week – one that was filled with forming personal and business bonds through shared experiences that simply cannot be replicated elsewhere. There will be a time for that very soon; however, today is not that day. Why, you silently ask? Because, to be candid, while my heart and soul are full from what was another smashingly successful event, I'm flat ass exhausted in every possible way a human can be. As such, this will be a short blog.

While flying home yesterday, I was thinking how amazing it feels to build something from the smallest kernel of an idea: to create a networking event that completely flipped the established script. From there, we focused on every detail, researched every potential location and partner, and worked our collective asses off to turn that vision into reality. To be clear, it hasn't been easy, and there are always challenges that come with planning a huge event, which begs the question, why do it?

Like brandivate, building Promocations has been a desirable difficulty.

Through our experience building this "little networking company that could," we have learned and grown in ways we wouldn't have had we stayed inside our comfort zone. Because of Promocations, we:

• Learned how to effectively communicate as partners, which has allowed us to both entirely own individual aspects of the event while being included in every step of the process

• Understand how to read a situation and make swift decisions behind the scenes when things don't go according to plan

• Learned how to make the best of situations that are completely outside of our control

• Taught ourselves how to build an event app that immerses each attendee by driving communication

• Fully understand how to deliver an event that creates incredible value for our supplier sponsors, and distributors willingly pay to attend

If we hadn't pushed ourselves to do things that weren't completely outside our knowledge base, professional expertise, and comfort zones, Promocations wouldn't have been born. In other words, building Promocations into something that is meaningful has been a desirable difficulty – one that I'm glad we undertook four years ago.

So, my challenge today is simple: ask yourself when was the last time you intentionally took on a desirable difficulty. My guess is that it's been far too long.