Hippie CEO Life #02 - Importance of Cadence

April 22, 2022

As we finished analyzing our 2021 fiscal year results, the data clearly showed that for the second year in a row, our growth was flat.

While lots of other companies were out there bragging about record profits, i was left wondering what i had done wrong and in a time where my confidence was already hanging by a thread, this was really going to test my ability to be resilient.

My ego said i should look to blame others and there were several really good targets that in my mind were fair game to take the blame and brunt of my anger and frustration.

👉🏼 It could have been the company that nets billions of dollars in profit every quarter that asked us to reduce our pricing by 50% as a favor to them, to help them get through this incredibly difficult pandemic period.

👉🏼 It could have been the company that, oddly enough, also nets billions of dollars in quarterly profits, that politely said that they were not in a financial situation in which they could continue paying us, even though we had 8 months left on our contract.

👉🏼 And it really could have been the most financially successful company on the list that smugly broke a 12-month contract with us, not as a empathetic conversation between us and our stakeholders but a cold, dehumanizing conversation between me and one of their lawyers, “We are an incredibly important company that has more lawyers than you have employees, we are breaking our contract, you aren’t getting paid, and there is nothing you can do about it.”

It was easy for me to feel picked on, beat up, and abused by massive global corporations. It was easy for me to feel like they were the ones to blame for our growth being flat. It was easy to let their actions have a very negative impact on my self-confidence but then one specific section of the Tao Te Ching starting yelling at me:

79
Failure is an opportunity.
If you blame someone else,
there is no end to the blame.

Therefore the Master
fulfills her own obligations
and corrects her own mistakes.
She does what she needs to do
and demands nothing of others.

i stopped blaming the actions of faceless global corporations and instead i started to express gratitude for the many massive global corporations that not only chose to stay with us but to expand their investment with us despite all the unknowns of a raging, global pandemic.

i stopped blaming others and i started seeking ways in which i could use this as an opportunity to learn and become a better version of myself.

What i landed on was the importance of cadence, embracing and finding joy in the process rather than some future, shallow summit.

So i took an entire Friday, turned off my phone, disabled all notifications, and started to think deeply about what things in my professional life would benefit from having a predicable cadence?

This exercise had a profound impact on how i viewed the work. The lofty, future summits that seemed so unattainable, suddenly didn’t matter as much. Rather than suffering every day to try to get closer to something that seemed so far away, i was energized by the cadence of moving the most important things slowly forward, inch by inch. i found myself actually enjoying the climb, the process, the journey.

“Mountains should be climbed with as little effort as possible and without desire. The reality of your own nature should determine the speed. If you become restless, speed up. If you become winded, slow down. You climb the mountain in an equilibrium between restlessness and exhaustion. Then, when you’re no longer thinking ahead, each footstep isn’t just a means to an end but a unique event in itself. This leaf has jagged edges. This rock looks loose. From this place the snow is less visible, even though closer. These are things you should notice anyway. To live only for some future goal is shallow. It’s the sides of the mountain which sustain life, not the top. Here’s where things grow.” ~Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values

✌🏼💛