Get Off the Wall
A light green phone, a woman named Lori, and the last one of these.
The phone was light green.
If you lived through the seventies and early eighties, you know the exact color. AND you know the long spiral cord, impossibly tangled. My father handed it to me. I was five. My dad had just won custody, one of the first men in Arizona to do it, and I had gone from living with my mother full time to living with him.
On the other end, my biological mom said softly, “sweety, I love you and I will never see you again.”
I am not sure a five-year-old knows how to register that. I hung up and stared at my dad, and at the woman standing next to him. They asked me what she said. I told them. Their faces turned aghast, and then they put huge hugs on me and a lot of “oh honeys.”
That woman is Lori. Tough as nails, big-hearted Iowan. She is my real mom. She is who my kids call grandma.
I did not know it at five, standing there holding that phone, but somebody had just reached back for me. She did not have to. She stayed anyway.
Here is what that did to me, and it took me about forty years to see it. I learned to stand against the wall.
Like a scared kid at the middle school dance. The cute girl, life, is out there dancing away, waiting for me to have the courage to come have some fun. And I am on the wall, doing the math on everything that could go wrong.
Some of you are on the wall right now. You know exactly which dance I mean. The business, the apology, the ask, the thing you have been rehearsing in the truck for a year.
Think About It.
What are you standing against the wall about right now? Name it. You already did, in the half second after you read the question.
Is it actually too risky? Or is it just that nobody has ever asked you to dance and you have gotten comfortable not being asked?
Twenty-five weeks, one argument
We started in May. Here is the whole thing in four moves.
Wake up. Your thoughts build you. What you focus on grows, what you say about yourself becomes true, and most people never notice they are running somebody else’s program.
Go in. Then you have to look at what is actually in there. The ego, the fear, the obstacle, the gratitude you keep skipping. The *sshole at your table is often you.
Level up. Then you build the machine. Habits, discipline, deep focus, and the five people you let into the room.
Give it away. And then it stops being about you. Ask for help. Quit holding the knife. Tell the truth early. Reach back and pull somebody up.
Mind, then self, then skill, then others. That is the path, and it only runs in that order.
Why a construction company spent six months on this
Our vision is to be the most trusted name in commercial construction. Our mission starts with three words: we build trust.
You cannot buy that and you cannot market it. Trust is what is left over when a person has done the interior work. It is the foreman who tells you the bad news on Tuesday instead of letting you find it in month four. It is the PM who brings a solution instead of a complaint. It is the guy who does the small thing when nobody is watching.
None of that comes from a policy. It comes from who somebody is. So if we want to be the most trusted name in this business, the work is not out there. It is in here, in all of us, one decision at a time.
That is what these twenty-five weeks were for. Purpose Driven: To Strengthen the Way the World Builds.
“Can’t never could.”
Me to my kids, their whole lifeI have been preaching this to my kids my whole life every time they said, “I can’t.” It took me most of my life to believe it.
And it is the whole point of the word in the middle of everything I am trying to build. Not will. Not should. Can. The Can is in you. It is the choice, and you have to make it over and over.
Twenty-five letters, and this is the only instruction that was ever in any of them. Everything else was just a different way of saying it.
Get off the wall.
“Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged.”
Joshua 1:9“It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare; it is because we do not dare that they are difficult.”
Seneca“A journey of a thousand li starts beneath one’s feet.”
Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching 64A Hebrew general, a Roman senator, and a Chinese sage. Two thousand years apart, no contact with each other. Same instruction.
Let’s Play to Win
One dance. This week.
- Name the wall. The one thing you have been standing next to. Write it down. It loses about half its power on paper.
- Take one step onto the floor. Not the whole dance. The call, the email, the first sentence. Ten minutes, this week.
- Find your Lori and tell her. Somebody stayed when they did not have to. Call them. Most of them have no idea what they did. If you are a believer, reach out!
If you only do one, do the third. It takes two minutes, and it is the one you will be glad you did.
And if the thing you are on the wall about is a building, a space, or an idea you have not said out loud to anybody yet, call me. We will lean in. If it is not our work we will point you to who it is.
Twenty-five weeks ago I asked you to come on the Hearts and Minds of Champions journey with me. Thank you for reading, for writing back, and for being the kind of people who do the work.
The journey does not end. It just stops being about you.
Let’s get after it in life, family, and business. AND LET’S PLAY TO WIN!!!
Lots of love, Nate
