Originally it was not my plan to post this...

This will be my fifth time riding in the Ride To Conquer Cancer and this year my plan was to self-fund the required donations — then enjoy the two day ride for a good cause without really bothering anyone. That was until I happened to read a sign and remembered something very important about having a voice.

As a result, I sent out my traditional "please donate to my cause" email (and I suppose decided to write this post).

Below is the email I sent —

"This year will be my fifth year riding in the Ride to Conquer Cancer for the Princess Margaret Hospital and I was going to self-fund my efforts this year... that was until I saw something recently and felt it was important to share.

It was a sign that simply said,

                "Cancer picks a fight with someone every three minutes”

Cancer is a funny thing — it does not care about gender, nationality, race, religion, occupation, social status, age, wealth, or anything else that we believe makes us special; for cancer, it’ll pick a fight with anyone. I thought it was important to share this and remind everyone that we are all in this fight together.

Like my last four rides, I will ride my heart out for those who can’t and raise money to defeat cancer in our lifetime. Please consider donating by “clicking” on this link

Please forward this email and remind everyone we are all in this together.

I promise to ride my heart out,"

It really was the statistic that cancer strikes every three minutes that was a shocking reminder this is not something to keep to myself — it needed to be shared. This also was a simple reminder that nothing ever changes when you keep it to yourself, and that it's important to add your voice to the conversation. I know you are bombarded with messages and requests constantly, and if you are able to donate to my ride it's greatly appreciated, and if not, that's ok too.

What is important to remember is a voice is always needed to make things happen, and it is important to be part of the conversation — if only to really listen and say, "Not today".

Without that voice, and that conversation, nothing will ever change... and as you know, cancer picks a fight with someone every three minutes.

iamgpe

Our pathways are complicated...

This is not something that is very unique as we all have histories we can look back on with fond memories — although, I will be bold to say mine are somewhat specialized. I suspect there are only a few people who have a Biochemica mug in their kitchen cabinet.

A very long time ago I worked for a company called Boehringer Mannheim and it was with this company that I began my career in earnest — it's now a division of Roche, but at the time it was a privately held company that sold big blood analyzers, small diagnostic units for analyzing blood sugar, and had this small group that sold biochemicals into the fledgling Biotechnology marketplace. 

You needed restriction enzymes to cut deoxyribonuclease (DNA) we had them; needed to put the DNA back together with T4 DNA ligase, we had that too; needed Tris(hydroxymethyl) aminomethane, we had it by the kilogram; and yes, we also had gentle proteases to separate your cells. We had it all, high quality products for those researchers who needed them and who were willing to pay our "high quality, high value" prices. Research Biochemicals were not something that came up in regular conversation and we liked it that way because we were a little unique for it. There were four of us, and with the help of our marketing manager, we ran around Canadian universities and fledgling biotech companies selling what we offered — never discounting because our pricing reflected the quality of our products like I said.

We were a premium player after all!

In hindsight, we really had little real idea what we were doing but did it with great flair, enthusiasm, and delivered profits that engaged the support of leadership — we jumped on any and all ideas to sell and we didn't seem to be afraid of anything (which is a big tool in the tool kit when you are young). No one really knew what to do with the five of us but it did seem they were all right with it.

A component of our value proposition was information, and in one instance this information manifested itself in the form of a 4' x 3' Biochemical Pathway Chart — biology is very complicated after all, and we had to get it all down on paper to prove it. The mug in my kitchen cabinet was just another manifestation of our value proposition... get a mug, then get a super sized chart, and then pay list price for high quality biochemicals to help your research along.

Like all things, when success comes your way things change, more people get involved, and new opportunities present themselves — this golden age of my career gave me some solid foundations to build on over the years:

• High quality does matter and people will pay for it — it's not the easiest sell but value pricing will take you further in the long run.
• You can do amazing things when you don't know any better.
• Sales is a satisfying and challenging profession with transferable skills that can't be learned anywhere else — and if you are in sales, always remember to "ssffs".
• If you are going to get into something, try to get into something that's in the early stages because there is lots of runway for growth.
• Layers get in the way of speedy communication and decision-making.
• Being very profitable gets you a lot of consideration.
• It's only in hindsight that you realize how lucky you were.

I hope whoever recognizes this mug is doing well (and everyone else for that matter).

iamgpe

There is a reason why they call it work...

work [wərk] NOUN: activity involving mental or physical effort done in order to achieve a purpose or result.

The past couple of weeks have had me a "little" busy (as well as a little sick), and during all of it I was reminded about the definition of work — that sometimes it isn't much fun (although I suppose by definition that's what makes it work and not fun). I will say I'm a big advocate of finding something that you love to do so it doesn't feel like work, but in the end it is work and it'll feel very much like it sometimes.

My reminder came in the form of 41,000 rows on an excel spreadsheet which required a yes or no decision to be made for each row. Without getting into the detail, I saw no other way of approaching it other than line by line — if there is another way or some AI trick that would've made it easier I'm still a little raw to hear about it quite yet.

There is no intention to debate what work is or what work holds the gold, silver and bronze medals for being the most difficult — although for the sake of getting to the point let's just define work as something that involves mental or physical effort, and my excel spreadsheet leans more towards the mental type of effort (although I was sitting a lot and we all know that's really bad for you). On a more pithy note, I'd say work is the period of time between when you want to stop whatever you are doing and when it's accomplished — and the longer that period of time, the harder the work becomes.

You get tired (physically or mentally), your concentration fails as your mind wanders, and your "will to finish" waivers — all of this influencing how long it takes to accomplish what you need to accomplish (which in turn makes you all the more tired). It becomes a vicious circle that requires even more energy to fight through something that seems to have no end in sight. In this dynamic, work is ultimately resolved in a very binary way — you either accomplish what you set out to accomplish, or you quit. 

It does become that simple — Accomplish or Quit.

There is no real accomplishment that comes without work and sometimes it comes down to four simple words,

"I will not quit"

iamgpe