In this analysis I look at the cost of holding VR meetings for one week compared with the cost of traveling to an international location and holding in-person meetings over that same one week. And to keep it simple, this analysis is the cost incurred by just one person: the person traveling (virtually or in actuality) to the meetings. If you want to get right to the cost comparison you can skip down to the table below and make your own assessment, although you’ll miss out on my (fascinating) commentary.

As a former leader of a global team at a Fortune 50 IT company, I did quite a bit of in-person traveling during my business career, both domestic and international. I consider myself fortunate to have been to many of the most interesting cities in the world and to have met some truly amazing people.

But as I look at that travel now, I realize there was a significant cost to it. There were hard dollars my company had to spend for me to go and hold meetings, and there were also “soft” dollars I personally had to spend in terms of lost time with my family and physical recovery from all the crazy timezone changes.

Let me start with the hard dollars and btw, all of these numbers are in US dollars. You can make the adjustment for whatever currency you use.

I generally planned $2000 for economy airfare from the US to an international destination. Sometimes it was less, like a trip from the US East Coast to Western Europe, and sometimes it was more, like a trip to Asia or Australia. Airfare is usually the single largest cost of an International trip.

Meals and hotel are the other main hard costs of an international trip. I’ve included a little extra for modest entertaining but I often found meal costs to be significantly higher when traveling to meet with customers and partners. Hotel cost is $250/night and I’ve included 5 nights for this analysis. That would be for a long trip – to Asia as an example. I would leave sometime on Saturday and arrive sometime on Sunday in order to be ready for Monday morning meetings. Side note: no matter how you plan it, one of your nights away from home on an international trip is spent on an airplane. Let me say that again. You sleep on an airplane. That’s a little known fact that never appears in the “travel brochure” about the glamour of business travel. And that’s also why you really need to be able to sleep on an airplane. So if you add all this up you come to the realization that it costs $4000 real dollars to spend the better part of a week traveling for international meetings.

Now there are “soft” costs to travel too, and those costs were generally just ignored by most of us who did a lot of traveling. But I came to believe these soft costs were perhaps even more costly than having to find budget money to pay for plane tickets and hotels. Key among these soft costs are: missing important life events with your family and social circle, and the physical toll rapid timezone jumps takes on your body. Let me break these down.

It’s a little bit complicated to describe but no matter how you travel to an international destination, you miss at least one full day of work in transit when you’re on an airplane, in an airport, or in a car enroute to your hotel. That’s a whole day you are out of touch when everyone else is working. And there is at least a half day of recovering from jet lag during which it’s a challenge to concentrate or stay awake. I’ve put a cost of $200/hr for the work hours lost. That represents a moderately high level leader but you put in the hourly value of your time for a more accurate calculation of cost.

The really expensive soft costs are the important life events you miss because you are gone. How much did it cost me to be gone on my daughter’s birthday? Or when my son had a Cub Scout meeting? Or when the key user conference I needed to attend was being held Mother’s Day weekend in Las Vegas? How do you put a price on things like that? It’s impossible, really. My family has forgiven me for missing all those important events, but I still remember them and wonder if I did right.

At any rate, the cost I’ve put on these life events is this: one life event equals two hours at the hourly rate of $200/hr. Seems low but it is hard to value soft costs.

That brings me to the cost of having VR meetings. Essentially it’s just the cost of acquiring a VR headset. VR headsets today vary wildly in cost but I believe as the business side of VR matures, the cost of a headset will likely settle to somewhere around the price of a laptop. I’ve put that cost at $2000 which may be a little on the high side. As for other costs, really the only other cost is you still probably miss out on some important family or social activities. The ability to meet in VR at any time means you will be having meetings outside traditional 8am-5pm work hours in order to accomodate people in other timezones. Also, the ease with which you can meet people in VR scattered around the globe means you may be working more hours.

One of the amazing benefits of VR is you can hold VR meetings from any physical location where you have a good network connection. My preferred location is my home since I live in a secluded area and have a nice home office.

But any quiet spot will do. I suggest you pick one of your favorite locations. That way when you’re done with your VR meetings and leave the world of virtual reality, you get a great surprise when you take off your VR headset and remember you’re at one of your favorite places in “real reality”. It always puts a smile on my face.

The table below summarizes all the commentary in a nice, succinct format.

The cost of one week of meetings in VR vs the cost of one week of in-person meetings:

If you’ve never put on a VR headset the experience is, to put it gently, all-encompassing. Even after you’ve spent quite a bit of time in the VR world the experience remains powerful.

At the time of this writing, the leading VR headsets are the Oculus Quest 2 headsets. To be sure, they are large and clunky, with two hand controllers that look like someone split an Xbox controller in half and put circles on both halves. The headset is heavy on the front of your face and doesn’t quite seem to fit no matter what you do. After a while, using the controllers gets easier, although they always look and feel a little odd to me.

But the minute you step into the VR world all of that clunkiness vanishes from your mind. “Overwhelming.” “Amazing.” “Comprehensive”. “All-encompassing”. These are all words that immediately come to mind. Even more descriptive are peoples’ reactions on stepping into the VR world for the first time.

A typical reaction is this: “Wow!!!……Wow……..wow…….wo……..” and as their voice trails off they simply stare around unable to even speak. I find that if I don’t say something they keep staring around for 10 or 15 minutes. Makes me smile. One executive summed it up perfectly when we brought him into a VR workroom for the first time. I started pointing out some of the features and he stopped me. He said, “Give me a minute…..this is a lot to process.” Totally captured it. He did need a minute. Everybody does. It’s a really powerful experience.

In my view there are three main things that make the experience so powerful. First, you ENTER the VR application. In other words, you can get up and literally walk around in it. You interact with the application in a way that’s completely different and far more realistic than how you’ve interacted with applications on your laptop or phone. In fact, you forget it’s an application. You can reach out and touch things. You have to be careful you don’t bump into (virtual) things when you’re moving around. You are immersed. You become part of the application in ways that are similar to you being part of the physical world. The second thing is the “spatial” audio, or audio that sounds natural in direction, tone, and volume. In our case we are working with business VR apps so there are a lot of conference table settings. When someone is sitting next to you at a conference table and speaking, it is totally natural and as if they were sitting next to you and talking in the real world. What you hear is that person’s real voice in high quality audio. The third thing is the avatars. Avatars in VR have the ability to point, gesture, smile, blink their eyes, turn around, and move to different places in a room. They do all those things at the time you do them and the way that you do, so there’s a good bit of your “personality” that comes through your avatar. One interesting note about about avatars. When someone makes their own avatar for a business setting they generally select features, hair styles, eyes, etc…that represent them in the real world. When you first see their avatar it’s quite shocking how close to real life their avatar is. I remember the first time my business partner and I connected in a VR workroom. I said “Vince!! That totally looks like you!!!” He said the same to me. And we’ve both observed that people who make their own business avatars look very much like the real person. It’s crazy how realistic avatars can be.

So there is no question the experience of VR is compelling – powerfully so. And a business minded person will immediately begin thinking how to leverage VR in a way that increases productivity and gives a competitive advantage. I believe there are several significant business advantages to be had by incorporating VR into a company’s processes, and that’s the topic of a future blog.

Meantime, if you’ve not yet stepped into the VR world, I strongly encourage you to do it. There’s no telling where the change in perspective will take you in your career.

P.S. If you need someone to help you take that first step, give me a shout. I love to introduce people to the world of VR for Business. 🙂

Business Translation: When you finally get to where you’ve been focused on for so long, you realize you’re only part way through the journey.

In the back of my mind, I always thought when I finally reached my goal of standing on top of a big mountain in the Himalayas that it would be something like winning the Super Bowl or the World Cup. Huge celebration, loud cheering, fist-pumping, jumping up and down, high fives, horns, confetti – total exhilaration. After all, for a guy from Florida who lives at sea level, to be able to stand on top of a Himalayan giant above 20,000ft has to rank at the top on the list of personal achievements.

Surprisingly, it was much more subdued than that. Don’t get me wrong, we were all really excited we made it to the top, but it was more like smiles and satisfaction than all out euphoria. And it wasn’t very long before we started back down…..maybe twenty or thirty minutes.

Since then I’ve often wondered why that is. I’ve come to believe there’s a good reason for it…….well, maybe a couple reasons. First off, there’s not much oxygen at 20,000 feet so maybe that dims the celebration a little bit. I say that halfway in jest but trust me, nobody was solving calculus problems at the summit.

I actually think the main reason for the subdued and shortened celebration is you realize you’re only half-way done when you’re standing on top of the mountain. I remember looking around taking video from the top, taking in the amazing the view when I looked back down the way I came up. I started thinking about how hard it was to get to the top: I had to climb over car-size boulders at steep angles, through an un-nerving crevasse field, across a glacier, up an ice and snow headwall that was nearly vertical at times. It was nine hours of the most difficult physical challenges I’d ever attempted. And now I was realizing I still had hours more of really difficult physical challenges ahead of me……and I was already tired.

That’s why you don’t stay on the summit very long. You’re only half-way. You still have a long way to go before you can take your foot off the gas.

What I learned about business from all of this is career goals are like summits. When you accomplish a goal you’ve had for a long time you realize it’s only a milestone in your career journey. You’re not done. You’ve still got more ahead of you. And like summiting a tall mountain, your celebration is often subdued because you know there is a lot more work that needs your immediate attention. In summit terms, you still have to get back down.

So it’s interesting. And in retrospect, a lot of the imagined euphoria of achieving my long sought-after career goals came in little bits and pieces along the way as I moved along the path to my goal. Here’s something to remember: take time to do meaningful celebrations. I’m terrible at that, and I always have been. I know people who are high achievers and are really good at celebrating both theirs and others successes. I look for people like that and I’m always grateful to be around them. It makes life so much better when everyone can smile, laugh, and feel good about their accomplishments.

Celebrate your success whenever you reach a goal. And know that even when you reach one of your goals it may feel like you’re not there yet because there’s a lot still to do.

That’s a sure sign you made it. Congratulations are in order.

Business Translation: The most difficult business decisions and the longest work hours are often faced alone, but other people around you doing the same and working toward a shared goal brings strong relationships that can last a lifetime.

I still stay in touch with people from an expedition to the Himalayas I was part of 4 years ago. And we were only together a couple of weeks. They were from all over the world and with one exception, I didn’t know a single one of them until we met in Kathmandu to start the expedition. It’s surprising how connected you get with people when you’ve got a shared challenge everyone wants to achieve. To this day I follow them on various social media platforms, smiling every time I see a new post. I’ve got upcoming mountain climbing plans with two of them and I know when I see them it’ll be like catching up with old friends, even though I’ve only known them for a few days some years ago. It was great camaraderie then and it still is today.

But along with the camaraderie, mountain climbing is lonely, which is surprising. You’re either trekking or climbing every day and there is a physicality of doing that for hours on end particularly as you get higher up. At extreme elevations where the massive Himalayan mountains are, it becomes so exhausting to take the next step that before long, you can’t both speak and climb at the same time, so you just climb. That leads to a very strange and unexpected loneliness. There are times when you really want to say something; like when you made it across that creaky ladder stretched over a deep crevasse, or when you’re climbing in the middle of the night and you come to a house-sized boulder on the side of a steep mountain and you’re not sure how to get over it. Not being able to talk to somebody makes you feel very lonely.

So, it’s a strange dichotomy: great camaraderie and deep loneliness at the same time. Seeing this dynamic in the Himalayas reminded me it’s exactly the same in our day-to-day work life.

What I learned about business from this is that work has long hours of lonely work mixed in with great camaraderie. The jobs I remember with the greatest sense of pride and accomplishment are those jobs where it seemed like everybody was working towards the greater good and we all had a shared purpose we wanted to achieve.

In a recent corporate role I was helping lead an organization that was being created as a global team. People were tranisitioning out of other teams to join our team. It was a messy, fraught process with a lot of political arm-wrestling as leaders around the world did their best to hold on to their people. We got it done but all the wrangling pushed the transfers up against deadlines for people’s compensation and reporting structures that had to be met if they were going to be on our team that fiscal year. So I set up calls to nail down final details for each person moving to our team. I started the transition calls East Coast time in the US, then moved to Pacific Coast time as the East Coast team was winding down and the Pacific Coast team started their work day, then I moved on to Sydney time, Singapore time, India, Dubai, Europe,……you get it – all the way around the world’s timezones. It was long and lonely. And there were plenty of other long and lonely hours of work, particuarly when I was traveling.

But I knew my boss was making similar sacrifices to stand up other aspects of our organization, so when we talked or met somewhere on the planet, it was a great time of shared accomplishment, celebration, and pride. I could fill pages with the laughing, jokes, and just all around good times we had. To this day we remain great friends and talk frequently. Truthfully, the business we’ve started together is mainly an excuse to work together again.

So when you find yourself in a stretch of long, lonely hours working, recognize that’s the way jobs are – it’s why it’s called “work” and not “fun”. Pace yourself so you don’t burn out. And when the camaraderie comes your way, embrace it. Take time to enjoy your work friends. Laugh together, celebrate, cry, think deep thoughts, it doesn’t matter. Just enjoy the camaraderie of shared purpose, knowing you’ve got a great job.

And if you find yourself in a job that has only long, lonely work hours and no camaraderie, have a look around. There’s a great job out there just for you.

Business Translation: You will face business challenges that are life or death to your business, and you will face those challenges knowing a single mistake could end your business.

I had been trekking through the upper reaches of the Khumbu Valley in the Himalayas for almost two weeks. I’d been through small Sherpa villages, up and down the winding route to Mt Everest, across glacial moraine and ice fields, stood in Mt Everest basecamp absorbing the majestic views of the massive mountains. An adventure that had seemed on the crazy side of sanity at the beginning, with a sketchy landing at the world’s most dangerous airport followed by ever higher ascents into the Himalayan Mountain landscape, had now turned into a rhythm that seemed quite normal. The scariness of the whole thing had eased into comfortable and routine – in fact I looked forward to every day.

And so, as we trekked down out of Mt Everest basecamp and around the side to make a summit attempt on a lesser mountain, I was enjoying the experience and feeling cautiously optimistic about what lay ahead. I had done things daily that for me were either things I had never done before in my life or were new personal bests. And had succeeded at all of them. I felt confident. Having practiced walking across very thin looking ladders over small abysses, climbed from basecamp to high camp, I was eager to make an attempt on the Summit.

And that’s when it hit me.

I remember exactly where I was, and if I’m being honest, I also remember a shot of adrenaline-fueled fear punch me in the gut. Looking out of my tent at high camp, I realized that at 18,000ft/5486m on the side of steeply sloped, boulder strewn mountain, I was beyond any helicopter evacuation.

In fact, I intuitively knew a small climbing mistake that resulted in a sprained or broken ankle or a broken arm could mean the end of me. Above 18,000 ft it’s not like anyone has the strength to pick you up and carry you, not even the Sherpas. If you can’t move under your own power, that’s it. You become one with the mountain in a very real and tragic sense.

So, what did I do? Well, I was honest and admitted what I was doing was a risky thing. Something bad could actually happen. And while I was thinking about that I started doing all the myriad and miscellaneous things I knew I had to do in order to be ready to go. So when it came time to start towards the Summit, I just stepped out of the tent and started climbing. I wasn’t really thinking about the risk, I was just putting one foot in front of the other and focusing on the moment. Back to doing what I knew/believed would lead to success. I guess that’s what it comes down to when you’re faced with a big decision: Decide and Do.

What I learned about business from this is there will come a time when I’m faced with a decision that will be either survival or death for my business. Full disclosure: I haven’t been faced with one of those decisions yet……. My business partner and I are just getting started on our business journey. But I have watched executives at other businesses – some very large and global businesses – stare down life and death decisions for their business.

One company in particular I was surprised at how quickly they developed a plan to sell a new and untested technology which cannibalized their most profitable existing product line – a product line that accounted for a majority of their revenue. Not only did they move fast and throw all their financial resources into this unproven technology product, but they also had the entire company embrace this strategy. It seemed hasty and risky to me. At the time they were the dominant player in their market. Why would they jump at a new product that hadn’t proved itself at all, AND risk the entire company’s future?

Well, they did. And turns out they were right. In retrospect, it’s easy to see they were faced with a life and death decision. I have no way of knowing but I’d bet they were fully aware that a mistake would be the demise of their company. They were courageous, and they didn’t hesitate. And because of that, their company continued to prosper and be the leader even as the market dramatically shifted to this new technology.

I’ve always remembered that.

My hope is when I’m faced with a life and death business decision for my business, I will have the good judgement to choose the right course of action and the courage to do it without hesitating.

Business Translation: Your passion, purpose, and plans have to move you forward and keep you focused until you can see your ultimate goal.

In what must be one of the biggest ironies of mountain climbing, you cannot see the Summit from basecamp. It’s frustrating, really, but the truth is when you’re right up against the base of the mountain and the Summit is thousands of feet or meters above you, you simply can’t see it. What makes it even more disappointing is that you typically have had glorious views of the Summit as you trekked towards it. You’ve had the opportunity to examine the Summit in great detail for hours at a time and it’s been quite exciting to see the route up to the Summit and imagine yourself making your way to the top. But when you get to basecamp, all of that disappears and all you can see are towering granite walls and glacial icefalls seemingly straight up above you. The obvious route to the top is no longer obvious – it’s disappeared. Furthermore, it’s not even clear which way to go just to start climbing.

It’s ironic: the Summit and the way to the top are easily seen from far away but impossible to see from up close.

(the picture is from the helipad at the far end of Mt Everest basecamp. You can just barely see a sliver of Mt Everest if you look at the “V” between the two mountains)

However,……it doesn’t really make any difference whether you can see it or not. You are going! You’re there because you’ve dreamed about climbing this mountain for a long time. You’ve prepared, trained, and sacrificed to get to this place. There’s no question you’re going to do everything you can possibly do to get to the top. You are pursuing your dream, your life goal, and now you have a real shot at achieving it. Of COURSE you’re going!

What I learned about Business from this is there is a great similarity of the “see-it-from-far-away-but-can’t-see-it-up-close” aspect of mountain climbing to business goals. Whether it’s a career goal you’ve had for a long time or you are starting up a business like I am with my friend Vince. Things that seemed so clear when you were making plans can suddenly be not clear at all. Maybe things you hadn’t considered come up, like potentially productive opportunities or additional ways of providing services to your customers. There could be alternate paths that only open up once you have started, like a leader you’re speaking with about one role suggests they’d be interested in hiring you for a different role, or a potential customer shows interest in having you do work for them very different from what you are proposing. Perhaps outside events intervene to move your attention in a different direction, such as a market consolidation which dramatically changes the competitive landscape. There are many unforeseen things that can happen around you that can take your eyes off of where you want to go.

That’s a good time to step back and remember the view you had of your ultimate goal before you started. Remember the path to achieving your goal that you spent hours, days, and weeks carefully thinking through, the detailed plans you made, the passion and excitement you had about pursuing it, and quite frankly, the almost overwhelming eagerness you had to just get started.

Take time to remember all of that. In all likelihood, those original ideas are just as good as when you first thought of them and none of the things happening around you has changed any of it – you can still pursue your original goal and dream. Let that original vision re-focus you. Let it excite you and keep moving you forward towards your goal, and eventually, as you make your way up your “mountain”, you’ll find that path to the top you know is there.

Business Translation: Just getting yourself into position to pursue your goal takes A LOT of time and effort, so don’t be surprised……keep going and you will get there.

You always think of basecamp as the place where the mountain climb starts, at least I always did. That is until I went to the Himalayas and Mt Everest basecamp.

It turns out that just getting to basecamp on the Nepal side of Mt Everest is an 8 day trek. It starts when you land on a VERY short mountain runway at Lukla (commonly called the most dangerous airport in the world) at 9,383 ft/2860m. Then you walk and walk and walk, while you wind up steep mountainsides, through high altitude valleys filled with huge glacial rocks, and over windy cable suspension walkways strung across raging glacial rivers, until you finally get all the way up to Mt Everest basecamp at 17,598ft/5364m. And the part that’s not in the “travel brochure” is the higher you go, the harder it is to sleep and the less you want to eat – just when you need lots of sleep and food. So you’re pretty much tired and hungry every day.

In short, it’s REALLY hard work just getting to basecamp.

But the truly amazing thing is how unbelievably spectacular and magnificent the journey to basecamp is.

The scale and majesty of the mountains is incomparable. The intensity of the fresh air and sunshine at high altitude is powerful in a way that makes you feel fully alive. The overnight stops at tea houses for meals and lodging can never be forgotten. And it never even occurred to me that just getting to basecamp would in itself be a journey to remember and reflect on.

What I learned about Business from all of this is that it takes a LOT of time, effort, and perseverance just to get to a position to START.

So……I say to you who are starting a company, or to you who are pursuing a life goal – don’t be surprised at how much time it’s taking and how much work you’re having to do before you can even start. It’s all part of the journey. A very important part. So relax and enjoy the “extra” part of the journey. There’s a lot to learn and experience in the “preparation phase”. Keep working on it and before you know it, you’ll be ready to start pursuing your dream!