Many years ago, my writing partner, Jay Levinson invited me to join him and a few friends on a camping trip deep in Canyon Lands National Park. I missed the camping, but made an unexpected career breakthrough.

Because of work conflicts, I couldn’t join the group until a few days into the trip.  That required that I drive from Denver to Moab, then catch a lite plane into the dirt airstrip at Hans Flat Ranger Station.  From there a boat would be waiting to take me up the Colorado River to rendezvous with their guide, and we would make the rest of the way to Horse Hoof Arch by jeep. 

When I arrived at the Redtail airstrip, I just had a bad feeling.  Over the years, I’ve learned to trust my intuition, and even though I had paid a LOT of money for this trip, I couldn’t bring myself to get on that plane.  I watched the other passengers board; watched the plane taxi to the end of the runway, then I shouldered my backpack and went back to the car, feeling like an idiot.

Now if the plane had disappeared into the canyons without a trace, or even crashed on takeoff killing everyone on board, THAT would have been a good story. But it landed safely, and the rangers relayed word to Jay that I was alive and well. 

It was a six-hour drive to go home, but instead, I pointed the car toward Salt Lake City, vaguely remembering a conversation with a friend.  He had suggested that I approach this seminar company in Provo that was looking for new topics.  So as not to waste the trip altogether, I resolved to go there and at least introduce myself. 

Arriving late in Provo, I discovered that it was student orientation week at B.Y.U., and there was not a hotel room to be had.  So I drove up into the mountains and pitched my tent in a national forest campground. 

The next morning, I washed up in the icy creek, drove back down to Provo, I presented myself, rumpled and road-weary, at the offices of Professional Training International.  There I made a short presentation about my new book, Guerrilla Selling, and the seminar that we had developed.  We had already run 42 public seminars for chambers of commerce across the country.  Based on that success, I suggested that we might work together to develop it for a national market.

The result: over the next four years we sold out more than 500 public seminars all across the US, and generated millions of dollars worth of business for both firms.  This effort drove Guerrilla Selling up the best-seller lists, and helped make ‘guerrilla marketing’ a household word. 

Sometimes hope takes the form of a quiet, nagging voice in your head that just says, ‘keep going.’  And while I’ll never know what fate that flight held for me, I know that moment of hesitation at Redtail made my career.

And by the way, the following summer, I spent two whole weeks with Jay and friends, deep in Canyonlands National Park.

–OrvelRay