• by Dave Morgan , Featured Contributor, May 26, 2023

I travel a lot as part of my job working in the advertising technology industry. Clients are all around the country. Events and conferences are, too. And meeting people face-to-face matters. Thus, I travel.

Most importantly, I learn a lot when I travel. It’s a big reason that I go to so many conferences. Not only do I learn a lot from speakers and panels, but I meet lots of new people with different perspectives. Networking isn’t just about meeting people that you might do business with; it’s also about learning from them.

Working in an industry that’s so dynamic, that changes in big ways year to year, makes learning even more important. It’s only through constant learning that you can constantly challenge and update your assumptions, points of view and strategies.

Staying in the same place, talking to the same people, reading, watching and listening to the same outlets are easy to do -- and great ways to stay the same. Staying the same in this business is a good formula for finding yourself waking up one morning without a job, without your company, without the market you were planning to capture -- and, unfortunately, without much of an understanding of why you lost all those things.

Learning is essential to growing and changing -- not just about how you do your job or how you plan your career, but how you improvise and adapt when things don’t play out the way you’d expected.

 You don’t have to travel to learn and grow. You don’t have to meet and talk to lots of new people constantly to learn and grow. But it sure helps.