Name: Michael McQueen

Job: International speaker/business consultant

Where: michaelmcqueen.net

Why is it important? I speak at about 140 conferences a year, all over the world. I’m mostly speaking about business reinvention and future trends. I always imagined I’d be on the road a bit, but I didn’t envisage the pace. In a busy month I might do 25 presentations, take 21 flights, visit 17 cities and stay in 16 hotel rooms. It’s weird, but I think that the nicer the hotel, the worse the pillows - yes, even those hotels with the much-hyped pillow menus. Really nice hotels have the big square fluffy pillows that are like a cloud - there’s nothing to them. I used to have to get up and speak at big conferences, and could barely turn my neck. I speak to multi-national corporations and it’s never a good look presenting my thoughts in front of the world’s most powerful businessmen and women with a crooked neck and eye tic! Eventually, I went to a chiropractor to fix my neck and he was selling a memory foam travel pillow. It’s the best purchase I’ve ever made. It’s the same size as an A4 sheet of paper and I take it everywhere with me. In fact, I’ve got two; I got my wife one as she was so jealous.

What do your colleagues think? I’m a bit of a pillow evangelist, so a lot of them are now doing the same thing.

Unusual moment? No one tends to see it, although it does double as packaging around fragile objects in my suitcase.

How much does it cost? About $40. I’ve lost a long trail of them so am always buying new ones. The brand I used is SleepAway.

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