Today has been a pretty typical day of travel in The ‘Shire.
The sun was shining. Glorious clear skies. The Red Arrows working up the Syncro Pair over the A15.
The endless train of lorries, tractors and other road users on the aforesaid A15.
Sigh.
I network a lot. I have 20 networking groups under my remit as a Regional Leader for 4N covering Lincolnshire & Cambridgeshire – aka The ‘Shire.
Every now and again, other networking folks fancy the opportunity to come and visit The ‘Shire and speak at one of my networking events – it’s a fantastic membership benefit & a great way to promote yourself.
And that’s when the fun begins.
‘I want to come and 4Sight in The ‘Shire’
‘Brilliant – where are you thinking of speaking?’
‘I want to do a breakfast, a lunch & an evening in one day’
‘Oooookkkaaaayyy’
‘You’ve got Newark Breakfast, Hemswell Lunch & St Neots Evening all on the same day. Google says its less than an hour from Newark to Hemswell, and just 1 hour 55 minutes from Hemswell to St Neots – so that’s perfect’
What I say – ‘Well, that’s up to you – lets see what we can arrange’
What I’m thinking – ‘HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA….’
You see, when it comes to The ‘Shire, Google lies. It lies because it doesn’t live here. It doesn’t understand the reality of travelling in The ‘Shire.
Google says it should take me 40 minutes to get from my home to the meeting I went to today at .
THIS IS THE REALITY.
I leave home at 10:30am to arrive before 11:30am. I leave the main roundabout onto the A15 towards Lincoln behind two hay lorries, & a delivery lorry for Moy Park. Doing a combined speed of about 12mph.
The A15, by the way, is single carriageway all the way to, through and beyond Lincoln. Just so you know.
By the time we’d passed the RAF Cranwell turn off, we had reached the heady heights of 40mph and the traffic queue was mammoth, but moving. As is the way in The ‘Shire.
You sit in the queue of slowing moving traffic and play ‘spot the outsider’. The folks who are not from around here. Who don’t understand the rule of travel in The ‘Shire. Who overtake.
You see, those of us who live here understand there is no bloody point.
You overtake that hay lorry to simply sit behind another. And then we all have to brake because you’ve been a twonk and slammed your brakes on to squeeze into the gap that wasn’t really there, and so we are all now crawling along at 20mph whilst the lorries build up a head of steam again.
We are all CURSING you.
And don’t get me started that you overtook on a double white line/on a bend.
Then we have roadworks to address the fact that most of the A15 is made up of potholes. We all stop. We wait. We go again. Slowly.
So it takes another 5 miles to get some speed back up. Then the Metheringham crossroads happens. So we all stop again and wait for 5 minutes until there is a break in the southbound traffic for the person to turn right.
And off we go again.
Then we get to RAF Waddington and hope like hell that they won’t stop the traffic for an incoming/outgoing/circuits flying aircraft.
Then we get to Bracebridge Heath and the first set of traffic lights.
And from here it can either be plain sailing, or it can all go to hell in a handcart. Today, it took me 20 minutes to get through Lincoln and back on to the northbound A15. Sometimes it takes 10. Other times it has taken 40. You never know. Seriously. Its in the lap of the gods.
Rinse & repeat my earlier comments – the A15 north is the main link to the M180, so lorries. Lots and lots of lorries. Slow ones.
And the Red Arrows. So everyone slows down to watch and hopes they don’t crash whilst trying to do so in a queue of moving traffic.
And the Outsider Twonk who over took just before the showground roundabout and barrelled in to the rear bumper of a Range Rover.
And the Caenby Corner roundabout which is just slow lorry central.
It took me 75 minutes to get to my meeting.
Now. You might be thinking – ‘what’s the point?’, and ‘why didn’t you take public transport?’
Firstly, if I didn’t network, I wouldn’t get new clients for my business. That requires a bit of effort when you live in a vast rural region where business owners don’t grow on trees. We grow a lot of stuff here in The ‘Shire, but business owners are not yet a regional crop. If I only networked within a 30 minute drive of where I live, I would be losing opportunities to have conversations that could lead to business. I would be restricting my opportunity to make and build new relationships which could help me grow my business. And I wouldn’t be networking very much either.
To get from one end of my region to another would take over 3 hours. In a car.
Now lets tackle the public transport thing. Which, basically put, is non existent. Take a look:
Here’s the thing. Networking is a vital part of getting your personal brand out there. Vital. Simply going to ‘local’ meetings isn’t going to crack it.
I’D BE INVISIBLE.
So I put the effort in. Effort in = effort out. It’s a no-brainer. Successful networkers keen to build their brand and their business in The ‘Shire know they need to plan their networking a little more proactively to get to as many meetings as they’d like. They look for 4Sighting opportunities to make sure they get as much bang for their buck as possible. They arrange meetings with suppliers, customers & potential new clients at those meetings to maximise the opportunity to grow their business.
And they never, ever forget that Google lies.