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How I Callused My Mind (and Climbed a Mountain)

“Only those who risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.”

– T.S. Elliott

The truth is, those who know me are tired of hearing about my Mount Rainier climb. I don’t blame them – the preparation was all-consuming for me. In fact, I should start with a big “thank you” to my wife, Kim, Placers’ employees and customers, my general care provider, Dr. Felzer, my chiropractors, my physical therapist, Dan, my personal trainer, Amy, and my yoga instructor, Shay – all of whom were kind enough to put up with my constant preoccupation with anything and everything that would get me up that mountain.

What started last Labor Day with a simple deposit with IMG, our guide company, concluded this July with a blizzard at 11,500 feet. You can climb in snow, and strong winds, and even poor visibility, but up on that mountain we were faced with all three.

We spent a tough night in frigid temperatures. Our tents were blowing like kites on the beach with all forms of precipitation billowing into my tent and sleeping bag. Needless to say, we got a taste of what it is like to be on the top of Rainier that night. Ultimately, nature decided it was time to descend off a ridge to safer and lower Camp Muir at 10,500 feet.

There is an incredible satisfaction that comes from doing hard things. Hard things take time. They’re complicated. They frustrate you when your progress does not seem to equal your effort. Climbing that mountain took me to a familiar place – the perfect metaphor for my journey with Placers.

Starting a business from scratch can often feel much riskier, challenging, and fraught with more setbacks than climbing big mountains. Truly. While this experience is impossible to summarize in a brief blog,

here are six lessons I learned throughout the process that can resonate across many aspects of life:

Lesson #1: People will opt to take the path with no pain or little resistance. As human beings, we are wired to prefer easy, soft, and no danger. Running towards danger takes practice.

Practicing the mental and physical discipline required to prepare for the climb made it easier to maintain the same rigor in the rest of my life. I came back not wanting to give up the gains of being in the best shape of my entire life. I’m more disciplined than I’ve ever been. By the way, this includes my time in high school when I could run a six-minute mile in August heat. Today, this old guy could outwork that young defensive end with ease.

Lesson #2: Not everyone likes change. It takes guts to go your own way and be who you want to be.

At 51, I learned that pain does not mean you can’t do it. I have arthritis. Getting up from a chair hurts at this point. But that’s the thing – it hurts whether I work out or not, so I work out. I get up and move. I strive towards self-improvement even when it’s uncomfortable. Nobody is going to do it for me.

Lesson #3: Being mentally tough requires you to work past stressful situations or temporary pain.

Getting up at 3:45 am to meet my trainer went from something I dreaded to something I craved. Was I going insane? Maybe a little. However, I found that the more folks thought it was crazy the more it made sense to me. After all, climbing a mountain is crazy. Preparing to climb the mountain wasn’t going to happen without a little dash of madness as well.

Lesson 4: We rarely maximize ourselves on a day-to-day basis.

As a leader, I challenge others frequently to determine if they maximized their day. Did they really give everything they had? Do they know the gap between what they gave that day and what they are capable of? Achieving big goals is transformative. I am not the same person I was before the climb – I don’t want to be. I have been told I was a bit of an a**hole, grumpy, selfish even. Everyone is 100% right. Getting up early means you go to bed early. Molding your mind and body into shape means you become antisocial by today’s standards. Everything I did further closed my gap – if it wasn’t, I would’ve been failing myself.

Lesson 5: My Dad always told me I wasn’t tough enough or enough of an a**hole to survive running a business through its ups and downs. I am a nice guy. (Well, maybe not as much today. Look out world…) But being an a**hole isn’t requisite to success – persistence is.

I am by NO means an Olympic athlete but over the last few months I have studied what it takes to become one. Mastery of something has a cost and will impact the rest of your life. I coach and write about how it takes 10,000 hours of mastery to become the best in anything. Within that 10,000 hours, there will be sacrifice. Which brings me to…

Lesson 6: Extremes in anything have repercussions. If it means enough to you, learn to be at peace with it. Breathe through it. The struggle makes you stronger.

My wife was the best and biggest supporter in every way. Even down to the very difficult discussion of how to move forward if something bad were to happen on the mountain. She knows it’s better to live dangerously by your bucket list than safely from your living room chair. When you take risks, magic happens.

Tell me, what has been your biggest challenge? How did you prepare? How did you overcome it? What lessons did you take away from the experience? What magic came out of it?

PS) The title of this Outside Insights is from David Goggins – a Navy Seal, Army Ranger, author, trainer and the originator of the concept of callusing your mind!

What 2009 Taught Me

In 2009, many businesses ground to a halt – almost a complete stop. Corporate customers stopped buying. Consumer sentiment was down, and people stopped spending. In the U.S., this was our entire economy. Most leaders found themselves navigating uncharted business waters, and leadership became narrowly focused on one thing: survival. I am proud to say I made it through to the healthy market now in its tenth year. However, I remember every vivid detail of how I spent my days as the President of a once #20 Baker’s Dozen RPO firm during the recession. Here is a candid look at my recession-era experiences from that time and the lessons I learned.

Failure is a Good Thing

During the recession, much of my day involved customers calling by the dozens to say they were no longer hiring that year. “Yes, I know we have a contract for services, however, I need you to simply cancel services.” I couldn’t blame them. They were feeling the same pressures I was. I remember the fear, frantic calls, and discussions with my staff and managers. We were living in a whole new world. At first, everyone played nice at work. We were all in this together, right? We were a good company with solid values and a great culture. We could survive anything together. But we were all nervous. Big contracts went away, one right after the other. Our recruiters came to work knowing there were no placements to be made. I’m sure they felt that their clock was ticking. Eventually our business shrunk. Staff had to leave. Or be asked to leave. Everyone was fighting to feed their family and pay their bills – the future trajectory of their career was an afterthought. We all had fewer choices. My people found new jobs. Me? I had to stay and decide if I would run or fight. I’m not ashamed to admit that the “let’s get the hell out of here” path looked all too welcoming at times. But I wasn’t going to give in.

“A failure is not always a mistake, it may simply be the best one can do under the circumstances. The real mistake is to stop trying.” – B.F. Skinner

I stayed and fought. And for a long time, I did every job in the company. And no, I didn’t do it near as well as the folks who left. I worked for less. Some weeks I worked for free. I survived, so no failure…right? Wrong. I failed. But as a company, we emerged stronger through the failure. Here’s what 2009 taught me:

Entrepreneurs are only done when they throw in the towel.
Money can always be found even if it’s at a premium.
My first business was not recession-proof, but you better believe Placers is recession-proof. Here’s why:
- We make money to save money.
- We avoid debt to grow.
- We pay attention to the economy and how it impacts staffing.
- We move up and down with GDP.
- We have a good business model that is proven.
- We’re not a jack of all trades so we can be a master where it matters.
- We know where we are going and relentlessly work towards that plan.

Throughout the recession, I was humbled. I had to be depressed. I went to work numb. I worked out a lot. I had dinner with my family. I could not work late – there was nothing to work on. Every minute I was not looking for new customers or ways to lower costs, I spent staring at my notebook hoping the answer to my problem would magically find its way on to the paper. What I found out at the end is that painful situations fade. They get better. Everything changes. One of those things was my focus. I was going to learn a lesson from failure and run my business resiliently, and I still do. The biggest lesson? We’ll never, ever, ever, ever quit. How about you?

The Story of the Bucket

The world of business is fast-changing. Fickle, almost. Climates evolve rapidly, markets come and go, consumer demand is continually in flux. Any company that navigates these inherent trials and tribulations with grace isn’t doing so because of sheer dumb luck. They have a secret sauce: Their employees. The lifeblood of any company is its people. It’s the individual and unified ideas, thoughts, solutions, innovations of employees that make up the heart of any organization and ultimately cement its differentiators in an otherwise crowded marketplace. Why then, after making a great hire, are many organizations tempted to force exceptional talent into the rigid confines of an empty space on a jigsaw puzzle? Operating under strict SOPs, essentially telling them to sit down, shut up, and do it “our way”? It’s counter-intuitive – and an unfortunate waste of the brilliance inside each and every one of their employees. I strive to avoid this pattern at Placers at all costs. When I sit down with one of our new team members, I tell them the story of the bucket. Take a look below.

The Story of the Bucket

When I started my first job right out of college, my new boss gave me a metaphorical empty bucket. Every day when I showed up on time or successfully completed my tasks, I would earn a thimble full of trust to fill my bucket. If I showed up late or made too many mistakes, I would consequently spill bits of trust out of my bucket. Frankly, in the early days I think I carried around an empty bucket that certainly had to have holes in it! I was a fresh college graduate. I had big ideas and a brain but did not always know how to use it. This company preached “earning trust”, but I came to learn that “earning trust” is subjective and finicky. It works off of fear. Instead, at Placers, we give out full buckets of trust on our employees’ first days. By starting with a full bucket, they’re able to spill some trust as they learn and experiment without fear. Thinking creatively and pushing the envelope won’t sink our ship, but it sure as hell might take it to even greater shores. In fact, a study by the Harvard Business Review showed that employees in high-trust companies reported 106% more energy at work and 76% more engagement than employees in low-trust companies. It really does matter.

“To be successful, you have to be out there. You have to hit the ground running and if you have a good team around you, and more than a fair share of luck, you might make something happen. But you certainly can’t guarantee it just by following someone else’s formula.”

Richard Branson

We say to our new hires: Don’t be afraid to spill a little! We need you, full body and soul, eager to make waves. We want you to be outspoken and curious. We need you to answer the call even though you don’t have the answer yet. We need you in all of your glory, not tepid and cautious because you don’t want to spill your bucket. We have big and important work to do together that can’t be accomplished with lukewarm ideas. Don’t be afraid of messing up. We trust you. So, yes, at Placers we like our buckets full – with just the right amount of water sloshing over the edges as our employees make leaps and bounds. That’s where our secret sauce is.

The Master Puppeteer

“Recently, I was meeting with our recruitment consultant, Freddy, over lunch and I shared this story. Back in the early days of Placers 1.0 and the CBI Group, we set out to propel one of the key tenants of our culture: employee empowerment. We asked ourselves how self-directed our teams could really be. Would they prefer an environment where they weren’t told what to do but instead treated like internal owners or “intrapreneurs”. We gave our employees the power to make executive decisions, and the tools and support they needed to make wise ones. We developed a No Strings culture. Twenty-five years later I dare say it is the only way we can compete.” -Chris

The Master Puppeteer

Many organizations run as if they are a puppet show. Leaders are the puppeteers and employees are the marionettes. To drive the behavior of the marionette, the puppeteers subtly pull on a string. Seemingly like magic, the marionette follows the carefully calculated moves of the puppeteer. The strings are thin and transparent, barely visible until you take a closer look. As invisible as they may be, the marionette simply doesn’t have the freedom to make its own moves. In organizations, these strings can represent a number of things. Compensation and bonuses, performance management initiatives, strict SOPs, rigid management, a culture that is closed off to change, a fear of coloring outside of the lines, the list goes on. Inadvertently, the strings met to protect businesses are stifling the game-changing ideas that could make a big impact. My goal with Placers is to have No Strings. Ever. As servant leaders, one of our leadership team’s core goals is to provide the right people, that fit the right job, with the right tools and environment to succeed without dictating their decisions. Every employee must choose to take initiative every day, to continuously learn, to try new things, to support one another – to be great at what they do. To have No Strings each of us must:

Practice See/Think /Act. This is how we make solo and team decisions. Slow down. Gather all of the information. Analyze it. Then decide on the best approach.

Be a knowledge worker. We all must be on a quest to learn. What can you learn from someone today? What can you teach them? The key is to always better yourself. You are your best asset.

Own it. At Placers, one of our key values is to have no excuses. No Strings mean you own whatever comes your way. When we operate under this value, our productivity is limitless.

No Strings doesn’t mean our employees are on their own. It means that they, and their ideas, are trusted and valued. A No Strings culture is rare – and is perhaps our greatest single day-to-day advantage. Help us stay true to our No Strings culture. If you’re a Placers employee and have identified processes that go against No Strings, just let me know. This is how we’ll get it right. Are you outside of Placers but want to receive weekly insights / tips / thoughts to ponder? Just follow the button below to subscribe to Outside Insights.