I normally take Flixbus when I travel in Europe. It’s inexpensive and has wide coverage, so it’s pretty popular too.
But for some reason I got myopic while in Germany on using trains and booked a ticket on the ICE train from Berlin down to Nuremberg. Initially I thought I made a mistake, it was more expensive than Flixbus but just went with it; it’d be cool to ride a high speed train once at least.
So once I was finally on my way, just over two hours, some times at 186 mph, ticket system up, laptop open, cranking out work. The ticket cost me $53 — more than the bus, sure — but the bus would’ve been five and a half hours stuck, no real way to work productively, and basically my whole day shot and feeling exhausted at the end of it.
On the train it was smooth with Wi-Fi. I cleared a handful of support tickets, fixed a bug on a recent project, and squared away project management for a new CiviCRM multisite implementation in Arizona. That work didn’t just cover the extra cost — it paid me back with time, progress, and lower stress. The ROI on the train was far better than the “cheaper” option; that work alone more than covered the price difference.
It’s like this: if you need to get somewhere, you pick the right vehicle for it. And it depends on whether something’s on the line. The train wasn’t just faster — it gave me space to actually work while moving forward (quite literally) and reduced my stress level.
I felt real good about the day. My initial concern of the cost faded away.
Here’s the deal:
With your CRM, if you’ve got technical chops or you actually like digging into the system, taking the long way might have an appeal to you.
But if you’re a busy professional who just needs the system to work, do you really want to put on yet another hat? You can’t cut your way to growth and efficient operations if you just look at the cost side of the equation.
Maybe you need some advisement and a second hand here or there. It’s not black and white, the solution has to fit the situation.