We are sobered us to the reality that we will always have to acclimate our climbs with a layover at basecamp; up and down, up and down. Prioritizing personal meaning that happens when we make time to have 1-on-1 check ins. Connectedness is crucial for a meaningful culture.
Realizing the imperfection and meaning of holding themselves to a written hiring process: win or lose.
Revealed thoughtful humanity compelling us to leverage our business in the generosity and service of those we spend time with each day.
Motivational speakers, sideline reporters and news organizations live in a fantasy land of grow, grow, grow so that when an organization has any backwards movement they label it FAILURE.
Trees are not meant to grow in the sky.
Humans are not meant to live on earth forever.
Life and business necessarily intersect and both are a rhythm of climb and descend, climb, descend.
This past week I was walking the coastline at Myrtle Beach while Jax was about to run his first competitive race in a year because of injury. I noticed something…the waves advanced, and receded, advanced, and receded.
We are not designed to sit on the mountaintop full time. Thomas alluded to the fact that an altitude of 8000 feet is considered the death zone.
When a car regularly red lines the RPM’s, it will burn up.
Ironically we’re designed to come back down to base camp often and…
Run another team mtg
Do another check in
Update the delegation roadmap
Review your culture calendar
Add another bank account
Track the dashboard
Update the job role
And review the budget again and again
The mindset of “we’ve already done that” will need to be replaced with a mind of “let’s do it again”.
As owners we cannot be in a constant state of climb and RPM redline.
As a team, we cannot also be in a constant state of sitting comfortably a base camp.
There’s a an imperfect rhythm to find.
On a cars dashboard there are two dominant gauges: the speedometer and RPM gauges. One tracks your speed, the other how many revolutions per minute your engine is spinning.
Let’s say the general speed of our business is 73 miles per hour. Sometimes we must speed up to 80…other times we slow 65 or 70. There is always acceleration of some kind whether the acceleration is summiting up to the 2nd Mountain at 80 miles an hour, or slowing the RPMS’s back down to Basecamp at 70 miles per hour.
We never take our foot off the gas, and yet we modulate the gas pedal to the appropriate revolutions.
A car is not designed to sit idle at 0 RPM’s. It is also not designed to redline constantly at 9,000 RPM’s.
Sometimes business is a rush: the new, the innovative.
Most times? It’s a steady 73 miles an hour at 2000 RPM’s heading to a particular place and a predictable pace: weekly schedule, team meetings, culture calendar, etc.
Dallas Willard, my favorite author, was asked this question, “what must we do to be healthy?” He replied simply and emphatically, “we must ruthlessly eliminate hurry from our lives”.
When asked if there was anything else, he offered kindly, “there is nothing else.”
If I may, I would like to adapt the statement into our BOP vernacular.
We must ruthlessly eliminate chaos from our lives.
How?
Activating ourselves with the oxygen of repetition, predictability and meaning of a rhythmic climb up, and ascent back down. Up to implementation, down to delegation. Up to executive leadership, down to team meetings. Up to legacy planning, down to subdivided bank accounts. Up to tax strategies, down to check ins.
If you went back and audited the coaching notes of the clients that have been in the BOP coaching family for the longest: 7, 8, and 9 years here are the coaching conversations you will find.
An accounting culture calendar.
A new executive job role.
An updated org chart.
A video sales process.
A job tracking sheet on a spreadsheet.
An expansion checklist
Implementing 1-on-1 check ins with regularity
Are these clients failures? No. Business is “the infinite game”...there is always growth, and that growth always requires a down-trek to basecamp where the most basic tools are sharpened.
The best football players in the world show up and…block, tackle, throw, and catch before they ever summit the mountain of complex playbooks.
As we push you as coaches into the four elements of our climb: purpose, people, process, and profit, it is crucial that you buy into the rhythm of climb and descent. Both are needed. Both are valuable. Both will set the stage for life and work of purpose, because life and business necessarily intersect.
You may not know this…the BOP family now has 94 businesses that are currently being coached. One of those received an offer to be purchased for $5mm cash and walk away (that’s rare).
When asked, the owner said, “a year ago I would have taken it because I was a slave to my business.”
Today, “I’m not interested because we’ve built a business I actually enjoy being a part of because it’s a business with meaning.”
This is an owner who still has to do all of the basecamp, first mountain, and second mountain things. $5mm…no thanks.
The second mountain is repetitious.
The second mountain requires built predictability.
The second mountain is more meaningful than a walk-away check for $5mm.
What is one basic, basecamp tool that you need to go back to and ruthlessly implement so you can ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your role and life?