Young Professionals Corner
The Ride Through Adversity
Ed Schreyer, SIOR, is the Executive Manager Director of Industrial Brokerage Services for
CB Richard Ellis. He leads a team of over 950 industrial sales professionals in the Americas,
which is the largest of its kind in the world.
Each year, I set a series of goals in my life. One goal
always involves an extreme fitness challenge to hone my
competitive spirit and maintain good mental and physi-
cal health. In June of last year, I completed my 2010
goal by cycling to the top of Mont Ventoux located in
the Provence Region of Southern France. Mont Ventoux,
which translated means “windy mountain,” is a legend-
ary Tour de France mountain climb and is tagged the
Mount Everest of cycling. The climb ascends over a
vertical mile (approximately 10 Eiffel Towers) in just
13 miles of riding. Lance Armstrong describes it well,
“ 6,200 feet up there, is completely different from 6,200
feet any place else. There’s no air, there’s no oxygen.
There’s no vegetation, there’s no life, Just Rocks. Any
other climb there’s vegetation, grass and trees. Not
there on the Ventoux. It’s more like the moon than a
mountain.”
In my self-inflicted “sufferfest” during the grueling
climb to the summit, I found myself drawing on many
parallels between this physical test and the adversity that
we have faced in our own business and industry over the
past two and a half years. Similar to the robust business years
prior to the dramatic market decline, the road leading to Mont
Ventoux is filled with the smell of flowers, gentle rolling hills,
and beautiful views of cherry trees and grape vineyards within
this French wine country. However, with a quick left turn, the
road veers straight up, the speed goes straight down, and the
physical exertion needed to maintain any momentum is multi-
plied many times over. Starting to sound familiar?
As the climb gets steeper, the road ahead seems to disappear into the fog through an endless series of switchbacks and
traverses. All you can do is focus on the next turn of the pedals
and the few feet in front of you while struggling to keep from
getting blown off the mountain. You keep telling yourself that
if you keep moving forward, you will eventually make it to the
top.
Each of you has faced a similar challenge in your business
during this unprecedented market downturn. However, there are
direct benefits derived in prevailing over severe adversity. In
basic terms: it makes you stronger, wiser, and better. This prin-
ciple can be found all the way from Kanye West’s #1 single,
Stronger: “N-n-now that that don’t kill me, Can only make me
stronger” to the Bible’s Romans 5, Verses 3-4: “More than that,
we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces
endurance, and endurance produces character, and character
produces hope.” How you choose to handle the adversity in your
own life is what will define you.
