Decidedly Not Lost

Lost and uncertain feel the same from the inside. They're not.

I was chatting with a friend this week about my business and what I’ve been working on for the past several months.

I've helped a lot of people and made a pretty good living over the past ten years. And for most of that time, I carried around a low-grade feeling that I was missing something. Things looked fine from the outside, but felt incredibly unstable on the inside.

People couldn’t see it, but I was lost.

Lost feels like no compass. No map. No sense of direction. You might know where you are, but you don't know where you're going. Things can look perfectly fine, and you can still be lost.

Uncertain is different. It’s standing at a fork in the road with the map in your hand. The path isn't clear yet. But you know where you're trying to go.

This is what building a business or growing a company should feel like. You’re not sure which combination of things has to go right. You might not know whose advice to take (and the Internet is full of people sharing what worked for them, in their context, with their buyers, at their price points).

It's not bad advice, but it may not be appropriate for you.

"Trust the process" gets thrown around a lot. It's usually just a dressed-up way of saying "keep going and hope for the best." That's not trust. That's thrashing.

Trusting the process requires actually having a process. A set of actions you've pressure-tested. A system you've seen work. When the uncertainty creeps in, and it will, you need to be able to say, "I don't know exactly how this resolves, but I know this is the right work." That's different from white-knuckling it because someone told you it would be hard.

The only way to figure out what good looks like for you is to put yourself in the right situations consistently and start noticing what's actually working. Not what worked for someone else. What works here.

That's not a quick install. It's a system you build over time by paying attention.

People argued with me when I told them I was lost. “There’s no way, Jeff. I see you out there doing the work.” But being committed to the journey and having a map are two completely different things.

I’m a thinker. Uncertainty will always exist in my life, but for the first time in over a decade, I am decidedly not lost.

This Week's Read

Bob retires. Sarah takes a better offer. And everything they knew about your best customers walks out the door with them.

This week's blog is about what happens when you don't capture it before they go. And what it costs you, one customer at a time.

Read it.

Deeper Thought

This is the first of a new segment. I’m going to prompt you with a thought for the week, and I’ll report my own thoughts back in next week’s issue.

I’m actually doing something with my family, and it’s turning Sunday evenings into something more meaningful than just a meal.

Think of someone who showed up for you when they didn't know you needed it. Did you ever tell them?

Take a walk this week. Think about it. Check back next week.

What I'm Into

The Players Championship is this week at TPC Sawgrass, and I’m paying an irresponsible amount of attention to it. It’s one of the first “really big deal” pro golf tournaments of the year, and the course is absolutely dialed. It’s a real treat to watch.

What I'm really interested in is the new PGA Tour CEO, Brian Rolapp. He’s got a lot on his plate.

A big organization that seems to have lost its way. Complicated politics. Loud stakeholders.

He's trying to make real changes, and in a way that feels considered rather than reactive. Doesn't seem to be trying to prove anything yet. Just trying to understand what he's working with first. It’s a very measured approach with huge implications for the sport, and the parallels to what we face every day in business are ripe.

The Shoutout

Maria Bross is someone I can't believe takes my calls.

She puts her whole heart into everything… the work, the people around her, the two little kids she's raising. There's just something about her. The kind of person who makes the room warmer just by being in it.

I shared on LinkedIn this week that she sends me messages from time to time. Something she saw reminded her of me. A quote. A thought. What I didn't say is that some of those messages hit me exactly when I needed them.

She didn't know that. She just showed up anyway.

That's the whole thing right there.

(By the way, are we connected on LinkedIn yet?)

Worth a Listen

Marcus Chan had me on The Revenue Vault Show this week. He tied my pre-sales career experience to the things we do every day, and in a way I’d never really discussed before. I’m really proud of this one.

YouTube | Spotify | Apple

Cheers,
JB

PS- If you've been wondering what "what good looks like here" might mean for your team, this assessment is the place to start. It takes like 8 minutes, and it’s more useful than you'd expect.