ALL CHAPTERS
Chapter Seven
On the Road Again: The Traveling Consultant
“Well, my dad is kind of like a migrant worker.”
- Coby Frampton’s six year old son
This chapter begins where most consultants often begin their week—pondering how much time they’re going to spend on the road before they can return home. There’s a lot to ponder, too. One consultant tells us he figures over the course of his career he’s slept a total of 12 years in hotels. Another has accumulated enough miles to circle the globe a few times over, or fly to the moon and back a couple of times. That’s the world of the modern consultant, a never-ending story of life on the road.
Here we offer you a glimpse into that life. It’s about days that begin at airports and end in strange cities in different time zones and unfamiliar hotel rooms. It’s about the quirkiness of small towns and locals who like to put cream on every pie in their municipality. Or airline flights where pilot, baggage handler, security guard, and flight attendant are one and the same person. It’s about surviving earthquakes and cabdrivers who don’t know if Delaware is on the way to Philadelphia and— being a consultant used to solving problems—thinking you can drive through the worst snowstorm in recent history.
In this chapter we learn about the tedium and the tension and the moments when you get a little past sanity on your way to somewhere. But we also learn about the exhilaration and the great variety of experiences and people you can encounter along the way. Mostly, perhaps, we come to appreciate the consultant’s motto to at all cost, “just keep moving.”
As our mostly veteran contributors reveal making it all work and staying sane requires discipline. Here we discover the variety of rules, tips, and practices consultants develop to help them survive life on the road. Consultants often become masters of the perks and upgrades and hotel deals and frequent flyer miles and every possible advantage they can finagle to make life on the road more pleasant. That may be no small matter, either, in these days increasing flight delays, more seats and shorter leg room on planes, and heightened security measures. Not to mention just the sheer increase in numbers of air travelers.
If travel is the bane of our existence, it is also the source of much of the flavor and allure of our business. Yes, it’s a bizarre life. But it’s also an interesting life.
I’m Sorry Sir, But He’s Out of Town This Week (And Next)
Close To 10 Million Miles
I don't know for sure how many miles I’ve flown. It must be over three million miles on American, two million on United, and I've got gold cards on five or six other airlines. I can tell you our vacations have all been on free mileage. I have six kids and the five oldest all flew back and forth to college at least a couple times a semester for free. In fact, not only do my kids come to me for free tickets, but they’ll ask me if I’ve got tickets for their friends, too. I imagine I’ve probably had hundreds of free tickets, and accumulated close to 10 million miles over the last 15 years.
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