I’m sitting in the Pittsburgh International Airport after spending two days with my client.  Thanks to the Alternate Security Checkpoint, I joined five other people to whisk through the TSA folks in three minutes rather than the thirty-minute cattle drive I left behind.

I miss feeling valued, and it is by far the biggest driver of my self-worth professionally.  When I lived in Corporate America, I shunned public recognition as much as possible (or liked to think I did).  Although I liked to think I was above it, I always liked being a high-potential fast-tracker, too young to be at whatever level I was at.  Today, I thrive best when I am valued, when what I provide to someone is appreciated and valued.  I don’t like when I am just a transactional provider of some product or service.

I am valued by this client, and all the hard work and sacrifice of the last few weeks is worth it.  A few of comments from my key client as well as some of his staff:  “Can we work with him rather than these other guys we work with?”  “We need him more involved.”  “I’ve seen alot of these, and this didn’t suck!”  The last one is heading to some marketing material of mine soon enough.

I passed out on the bed of my corner luxury suite in an old-town Pittsburgh hotel, forgetting to ask for the wake-up call at 4:00AM which would get me at the airport in time to fill-up my rental car, turn it in, move through Security, and make it to my 6:45AM flight.  No wake-up call from the Front Desk, but I opened my eyes at 4:04AM.

My view as the sun set last night.

Tags: Pittsburgh, value

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 18th, 2008 at 2:57 am and is filed under Working. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.