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Grow & Scale A Business That Will Set You Free

Doctor No

by Walt | Aug 31, 2023 | Success | 0 Comments

What is essential is invisible to the eye.

— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

I have a confession to make: I’m a huge James Bond fan. I have loved them all in all of their incarnations and inanity, from Connery to Craig.

Dr. No was the first Bond movie, dating all the way back to 1962. Bond was played by the inimitable Sean Connery. Julius No was the villain.

But these days, I tend to think of anyone with doctoral level skills in “No” as a hero.

I gave a workshop recently on mindfulness and work-life balance. As I was getting ready for the workshop, I had a convo with a colleague of mine, Sandy.

Sandy, a lawyer, said, “Walt, I hear you’re giving a seminar on life balance.”

“Yes,” I said. “Are you coming?”

Breathlessly, because Sandy is usually breathless and in a hurry, she replied, “No, can’t, have no time.”

We both chuckled about how ridiculous that sounded. But however ridiculous it may have been, it is, for most, not only irony but truth.

We have no time to get balanced because we’re so out of balance. And breathless.

Saying “no” might help.

If you’re reading this, you are, most likely a person of service. You tend to want to please others and be seen as affable. If you get asked to contribute in some way to a church or school or community event, most often your knee-jerk reaction is to say yes. And if you dare say no, it’s not without some chagrin and guilt.

Parents are particularly prone to “yes.” As parents, we’re hard-wired to want the best for our kids. We’re hard-wired to want to see them happy. Most of the time, in our minds, the “best,” or what we think will make them “happy,” is to say “yes” to whatever the request is. Even when saying “no” may be the “right” response.

Helping professionals are especially at risk. They get paid to come to the rescue. And coming to the rescue feeds their sense of self-worth. The more they say yes, the more meaning and significance they feel. Even when saying “yes” places them at risk for divorce, depression, and burn-out. (Not that I know much about this personally!)

Not only that, saying yes, being busy, is “in.”

How often during the course of the day does this occur? “How are you?” you ask someone. “Busy,” they reply.”

Busy is a badge of honor. Busy is good. If you’re not busy, something’s wrong!

How would it be if someone were to ask you how you were and you were to respond, “Languid.” “Bored!” “Been laying about.” “Haven’t had a thing to do in weeks!” You’d get a look that might suggest that they thought you were on crack.

You gotta be busy. Because to be busy is to be important. To be busy is to have worth.

The problem, of course, is that by continually saying yes, you become stretched too thin, over-extended. Depleted. Worth-less.

I really like the Pareto Principle. It’s also called the 80/20 rule.

Tim Ferriss in his provocative book The 4-Hour Work Week, says, “When I came across Pareto’s work one late evening, I had been slaving away with 15-hour days seven days per week, feeling completely overwhelmed and generally helpless.”

Overwhelmed and helpless ring any bells? I know that I am susceptible to this!

“Faced with certain burnout or giving Pareto’s ideas a trial run, I opted for the latter,” Ferriss says. “The next morning, I began a dissection of my business and personal life through the lenses of two questions:

1. Which 20% of sources are causing 80% of my problems and unhappiness?

2. Which 20% of sources are resulting in 80% of my desired outcomes and happiness?”

What are the 20% of the customers or clients that give you 80% of the headaches? Get rid of them. What is the 20% of your work that gives you 80% of your joy? Focus on it.

Who are the 20% of people who produce 80% of your happiness, who support and encourage you? Who are the 20% who cause the 80% of your angst?

You get the idea. We all take on too much. And much of what we take on is at the margins. Get rid of what’s not working. Do only what is.

Say no more often. Say yes only to what is essential. Say yes to what brings joy.

Robert Frost wrote, “good fences make good neighbors.” Your boundaries matter. They protect you and make you whole.

By eliminating whole bushels of stuff from your life, you open expanses of time that will allow you to rest and renew. To reclaim your sense of purpose. Your sense of wonder. Your creativity. Your very self.

By saying no to what’s not working, you dissipate busyness, you open yourself to the richness and fullness of life.

By saying no, you say yes.

Handcuffed To The Bed

by Walt | Aug 24, 2023 | Success | 1 Comment

Would that it were so!

That might have been interesting.

But alas… it was not my bed…

I was handcuffed to work that was sucking my soul.

I loved law school. The reading, the research, the classroom, the debates, the arguments. All of it.

But within months of graduating, I’d realized that being a trial lawyer was a terrible fit for me.

The constant combat; the unhappy combatants; the hermetically sealed office; the 70 hour weeks.

But I’d come out of school with a mound of debt. I had a big suburban house, a mortgage, 2.2 children and a minivan.

I was really good at what I did; and I made a lot of money doing it.

I liked the money. (I needed the money.)

But my soul was being sucked away.

I was trapped. (Or so I thought.)

Golden handcuffs, the therapist said.

Kinda like trapping monkeys, I later discovered.

If you want to catch a monkey, you cut a hole in the top of a coconut, just large enough for a monkey to slip its hand into. You chain the coconut to the ground, and wait.

Along comes a hungry monkey. It slips its hand into the coconut, and grabs the soft meat of the coconut. But, with its fist now closed, it can’t pull its hand out of the hole.

Boom, you have a monkey.

Which sounds pretty dumb on the monkey’s part, because all it needed to do was to open its clenched fist, let go of the meat, and run free.

But once a monkey grabs hold of something, it’s hard to let go.

So I held on, even though I knew that the job was slowly killing me.

Too many years went by.

I didn’t know then that when I finally found the courage to release my grip, and run free, that the work I would discover would provide joy beyond my wildest imagination. And a wonderful income too.

What are you grasping on to?

What would it be like to let go?

When You Are Lost

by Walt | Aug 17, 2023 | Success | 1 Comment

I was lost. Hopelessly lost.

“In the middle of the journey of my life, I found myself in a dark wood with no clear way out.” So begins Dante’s Divine Comedy.

That was me.

It wasn’t comedy.

I was bored; restless, unhappy.

Yearning for something more, different, exciting.

I was searching for meaning, purpose; something.

And it seemed ridiculous to me. Because by all outward appearances, I had it all. The beautiful house, the nice cars, a big boat, a fancy office, a prestigious career.

There was so much to be grateful for. And, yet, there I was: a miserable fuck.

My marriage failed. (Or I failed my marriage. Inartfully, unlovingly.)

I’d burned the metaphorical house down.

I became a caricature of myself; a hapless single dad, raising three young boys; a listless lawyer trying to manage a firm.

Trying to keep my shit together.

But truth be told: it was just a shit show.

Barely able to crawl out of bed; barely able to keep my head above water most days.

I couldn’t see the way.

But there was a way.

And I’m here to tell you that there is a way for you.

Not an easy way. (Nothing worthwhile is easy.)

But a way that leads to joy and peace.

Here’s the bad news: When you’re lost in the woods, you need to stop. (And hug a tree as we tell our kids.) You simply can’t run headlong into the maelstrom. You’ll break too many things. Yourself and others.

Your need to get quiet and still. You need to surround yourself with good friends and wise guides.

You cannot do this yourself.

You need to feel the feels. The sadness. The remorse. The fear. The trembling.

You need to let the tears come.

And then you must get out of that brilliant mind of yours.

Connect with the ground. The Ground of Being.

Drop into your heart space.

Feel your heart.

Listen to that beautiful heart of yours. Because your heart knows the way.

It always knows the way.

From that place – only from that place – will the darkness shift.

Dawn will come.

Through the dark wood, you will begin to see the path.

To your new life that is already waiting.

Peace to you.

Add Water At Your Peril

by Walt | Aug 10, 2023 | Success | 0 Comments

Winemakers in Châteauneuf-du-Pape must adhere to strict guidelines if they wish to present their wines to the marketplace as wines from the Châteauneuf-du-Pape region . One curious rule is that, except in extraordinary circumstances (and then only with special dispensation), winemakers may not ever water their vines.

The land in the region of Châteauneuf-du-Pape is rocky, dry and laden with clay.

And so we inquired of the master sommelier in one of the vineyards we visited, “Why wouldn’t you water the vines?”

“Because,” he explained, “Without artificial irrigation, the roots of the vines must grow deep; and the vines become resilient and strong. If we were to water the vines, the roots would stay near the surface and the vines would be much more likely to fail.”

When you are compelled to grow your roots deep, you become resilient and strong.

That, of course, is the challenge of our lives.

To grow deep roots, to become resilient, requires discomfort.

We hate discomfort.

We want easy.

The magic, the majesty, the joy, the deep satisfaction is most usually found just beyond that place of comfort: one more rep with the weights, one more minute with the plank, pushing out one more mile on the run; holding the question just a little longer; staying with the ambiguity, in the uncertainty; digging just a bit deeper with the research; lingering just a bit longer with the words on the page.

Leaning into the discomfort; and not fleeing from it.

We’ve learned this lesson ourselves over and over again in the high mountains of the world when long after the packs have become way too heavy to bear, we break through the clouds to share what few will ever see; and on ultra-distance races, when long after our bodies have told us we were done, just a few more miles brought us to the finish line.

We’ve learn this lesson ourselves over and over again in our business when we’ve stayed in the insoluble problem long after the confusion and despair have set in to discover a way through that yields extraordinary results.

We’ve learned hard lessons in our parenting too. Who doesn’t want to make the lives of their children easier? Who wants them to suffer; to experience discomfort? Yet all too often when we’ve stepped in to “rescue” a child, to smooth their road, to solve their problem, we’ve seen (in the rear view mirror with regret) the lost opportunity to grow their roots deeper.

Of course, we’ve fled discomfort too. Too many times to count if truth be told. Retreating when the wind has blown too hard; and the feet have become way too sore. Abandoning a project because it has required that we become beginners again; and it all just seemed way too complicated.

And always with the fleeing comes regret. Regret for what might have been. If only we had leaned into the discomfort. Leaned in just a little bit longer.

“Don’t wish it were easier; wish you were better,” Jim Rohn once said.

“With discipline comes freedom,” Ann says.

Deep roots make strong vines. And create extraordinary lives.

Perhaps a little drought is good.

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I promise that if you work with me as a coach, I will make your life uncomfortable. When you’re ready, email me: [email protected]

Catching Dreams

by Walt | Aug 3, 2023 | Success | 2 Comments

And afterward, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions.

— Joel 2:28

Dreamer.

The word has a bad rep. It connotes laziness. Distraction. Fuzziness. Idealism.

To dream suggests that you’re not fully present, that you’re somehow disconnected from reality.

“Get real,” we tell dreamers.

And some dreams can be pretty damn weird.

But many are visions, hopes, and aspirations that reside in the recesses of your mind. They may represent things you want to do, achieve, have, be. They can form a mosaic of your life made whole.

Your dreams are your own silent visitors from an unconscious world that inspire you to create; that urge you up in the morning; that drive you forward. They are the engines of your heart.

Climbing Denali was a dream for me. Ever since I was a boy, I wanted to climb The High One: the one that rose up out of the plains with the highest uplift in the world, the one with the coldest temperatures and the the most ferocious winds; the epic storied one that has always challenged mountaineers from around the globe. Inspired by a book my father gave me, I dreamed of being an explorer; of walking on Denali’s glaciers, climbing through Denali Pass, traversing beneath the Archdeacon’s Tower, and standing on its summit.

And I did.

It was a somewhat curious dream. Not terribly practical. Or “useful.” Some would say downright inconvenient (Ann), especially as I contemplated the third attempt in eighteen years.

But dreams aren’t always logical. Many don’t make sense to other people.

But they don’t have to. Our dreams belong to us.

Dreams are sometimes vivid, sometimes not, sometimes odd, always elusive.

But many whisper to you. Of joy, of hope, of possibility. Of life fulfilled.

I love the symbol of the dreamcatcher. Woven in webs with sinew, The Chippewas believed that by sleeping beneath these hoops, they could sift out the “bad” dreams and capture the good.

Too few of us capture and pursue their dreams. And time is not your friend. “Nobody grasped you by the shoulder while there was still time, ” wrote Antoine de Saint-Exupery. “Now the clay of which you were shaped has dried and hardened, and naught in you will ever awaken the sleeping musician, the poet, the astronomer that possibly inhabited you in the beginning.”

Time will rob you if we let it. The clock will run out.

Tony Robbins says: “We’re so caught up in all we have to do – be sure to take the time to stop, be silent. Listen to the whispers of Destiny… guidance is waiting.”

The Carmelite mystic William McNamara admonishes: take long, loving leisurely looks at the real.

You must take the time to touch your dreams, to cradle them, to nurture them, to bring them to life. (No one else will.)

I hear so many of my contemporaries talk of being “too busy,” “too out of shape,” “too old” to do what they otherwise might do. That the time for fulfilling the dreams they once had has passed.

That’s bullshit.

“The best is yet to come,” Sinatra crooned.

“Your car goes where your eye goes,” writes Garth Stein in his beautifully crafted bestseller The Art of Racing in the Rain.

Your heart goes if you will but follow.

“Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined,” wrote Thoreau.

Denali was my dream. (There are many more, of course!)

What are yours?