What I learnt during a 250km foot race across the Sahara
In the midst of a gruelling 250km foot race across the Sahara, Poem co-founder and managing director Rob Lowe had something of an epiphany about his work, his agency and his people.
I recently returned to Sydney having completed a once in a lifetime ‘bucket list’ experience I’ve been dreaming about since my teens.
It was unbelievably tough, hugely rewarding and unexpectedly thought-provoking. It clarified some opinions in regard to my own career and running an agency that I thought were worth sharing.
As background, the Marathon Des Sables is a seven day, 250km foot race across the Sahara in Morocco, during which you carry all the food and equipment you need to be self-sufficient.
How you decide to tackle the race – whether you choose to run or walk it – dictates how much you carry and how much time you spend on your feet.
I finished in 33hrs 20 mins total, whilst the true heroes walked and were out there suffering for 75hrs-plus.
Out of 1085 starters, only 763 people finished this year, with 30% dropping out due to dehydration and heat exhaustion.
Here are a few things I learnt in the desert.
Preparation, housekeeping and discipline will see you through the hard times
Including Covid cancellations, I’d been preparing for this race for nearly five years.
I’d trained physically, researched equipment, read blogs, got advice from experts and spoken to people who’d done it previously.
My spreadsheets and formulas were as detailed as my agency P&L.
This meant that after the initial excitement of the starting gun, when things fell apart quickly on the first day and the medical tents were overrun with people on drips or with horrific blisters, I felt tired but ok and could look after myself.
I drank my water and took my salt tablets religiously.
In agency land, it can be all too easy to roll with the good times, forgetting or not bothering to keep your house in order.
That’s fine while things are easy, but what happens when Covid unexpectedly hits, or the recession takes hold, or you lose a big account?
At Poem, we’ve spent a lot of time recovering and rebuilding our processes post-Covid and it’s taught me that we all need to remain disciplined, come famine or feast, if we want to thrive and not just survive what life and the industry throws at us.
Simplicity of priorities
It’s all too easy to get excited about the opportunities for agency or career growth and expansion, from social media capabilities through to B2B skillsets and try to do everything all at once.
However, sometimes it pays to focus on fewer, simpler things. Like what you’re good at, or what’s actually bringing in revenue, the project right in front of you, your culture or how you service clients.
Do these simpler things well and the rest will follow.
Out in the desert, my focus was on my base needs. How to keep moving from one horizon or check point to the next, staying cool, eating and staying hydrated, resting and recovering.
That was it. And that focus is what got me to the end without being distracted by negative thoughts or sidetracked by overthinking.
Effort and resilience
It can seem sometimes like another agency or another person at your level has an unfair advantage, a secret ingredient that enables them to excel where you can’t.
I suppose sometimes that’s true, but often, most people’s or most agencies’ success has come from hard work and perseverance.
It’s those people that put in the effort and can grind away, never letting go and hanging on by their fingertips when things get tough, that end up on top. It’s a game of endurance and resilience.
Who can put up with and stomach the most, whilst remaining positive in the knowledge that things will always get easier if you can stick things out for long enough.
That was my biggest lesson of the desert.
I’m not fast. And I’m not stronger than others. But my ability to grind through hard times of feeling uncomfortable, through negativity or pain, by singing songs in my head when all I wanted to do was stop, kept me going and got me to the finish line before others who had more experience.
Shared goals and vision
This last one’s a big one. It’s the bit I’ll always remember.
Day four of the MDS is a long 90km stage. It’s a killer. I’d reached check point five (about 65kms in) and was utterly cooked, sick and dizzy from heat exhaustion after a full day in the sun. I collapsed on my back next to another runner from France called John Michel.
He persuaded me to carry on. We got up. We walked. We chatted in broken sentences and were eventually joined by a second Frenchman called Antoine.
The three of us walked and then ran together through the rest of that day and night, each of us pulling the others along through the peaks and troughs of exhaustion, all with the same single-minded goal of getting to the finish.
The feeling of crossing that line was unlike anything I’ve ever experienced.
The bond with these two guys I’d only met that day and couldn’t easily speak to, was driven by a shared vision, achieved through hard work and by supporting each other. I could never have done it alone. In total it took me 14 hours.
The same applies for business, colleagues and client relationships. If you’re all clear on exactly what you’re there to achieve and where you’re going, it doesn’t matter if you don’t speak the same business language. It doesn’t matter if your skillsets or working styles are totally different.
You can achieve so much more through the combined individual efforts of the people working together and the feeling of shared comradery, agency or company culture, that the results from shared goals can be staggering.
The video of us finishing says it all.
It was a big experience. One that I’m still processing. All up I came 50th (which was a big surprise) and raised roughly $15,000 for Sony Foundation and for the support of a friend with disabilities.
I’m lucky enough to have had the support from family, friends, Poets and clients to have been able to do it. Plus, the time and the money. I’ve perhaps not taken enough time out of my career to date to do these kind of things – so I’d recommend everyone, at every level, to at some stage do something that really challenges you and makes you feel uncomfortable.
It doesn’t have to be a desert race – it could be learning an instrument or doing your first 10km. It’s not just good for you personally, it’s invaluable for your life experience and an investment in your career.
To that purpose we’ve introduced a fully paid month off for five-year sabbatical at Poem, in addition to the standard 10 year, to help encourage people to have their own experiences without having to leave their jobs.
We’ve also increased paid maternity leave to three months, annual leave to 24 days, and committed to an early finish every Friday.
We want every Poet at Poem to be an agency leader of the future and we believe that this requires a combination of hard work and life experience, which we want to encourage.
Rob Lowe is the co-founder and managing director of Poem.
Massive congratulations and respect, Rob! Thanks for sharing the experience.
User ID not verified.