Month: February 2021

The next topic in this series on Life Design that I’d like to give some thoughts to is on the tension between scaling vs. simplicity. Scaling is a fun word. When you have a business, the idea is to grow and expand. And the way you do that is to scale. Scaling your business simply means that you put systems and processes in place that then allow your business to naturally grow. It’s about automating and delegating tasks, hiring teammates, and spending money on marketing.

If you want your business to grow, you have to scale. But before you make that decision, you have to decide whether you want your business to grow. That may sound like a stupid question: Of course you want your business to grow! But I think it’s actually a really important question.

Here’s the question I’ve been asking myself for awhile: “What exactly do I want?” Here’s the truth: I’m very satisfied with where I am. More growth means more complexity, and these days I’m very much valuing simplicity. The tension is found in the principle that if you’re not moving forward, you’re actually drifting. I don’t want that.

A few years ago I went through Michael Hyatt’s Free to Focus course, and it made a huge difference in the way I organize my life and business. I began putting systems in place. Hyatt says that before you can delegate you have to automate, and before you automate you have to eliminate. The elimination and automation made a huge difference for me. You could say that they have helped me to scale.

One thing that you should know about me is that in my 20 plus years of working, I have rarely been managed by others, and I haven’t done a ton of managing others. I have been a solo entrepreneur in most of my ventures. In some ways that has made me into a jack of all trades, and perhaps in some ways a master of none. I’m good at a lot of things, and I enjoy doing most of those things.

I realize that I could hire people to do the things I’m not crazy about. That’s important. What is more important, at least to those who advocate scaling, is that I could hire people to do things I like, but which do not generate income. That way I can spend more time doing those activities that generate income. That makes a lot of sense, but it causes me to again ask the question, “But do I need to generate more income?” That is a life design question.

I don’t know where I first heard the story of the Mexican fisherman who met the American investment banker. Do you know this story? Rather than retell the story myself, below is the story from a site called bemorewithless.

An American investment banker was at the pier of a small coastal Mexican village when a small boat with just one fisherman docked.  Inside the small boat were several large yellowfin tuna.  The American complimented the Mexican on the quality of his fish and asked how long it took to catch them.

The Mexican replied, “only a little while. The American then asked why didn’t he stay out longer and catch more fish? The Mexican said he had enough to support his family’s immediate needs. The American then asked, “but what do you do with the rest of your time?”

The Mexican fisherman said, “I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, take siestas with my wife, Maria, stroll into the village each evening where I sip wine, and play guitar with my amigos.  I have a full and busy life.” The American scoffed, “I am a Harvard MBA and could help you. You should spend more time fishing and with the proceeds, buy a bigger boat. With the proceeds from the bigger boat, you could buy several boats, eventually you would have a fleet of fishing boats. Instead of selling your catch to a middleman you would sell directly to the processor, eventually opening your own cannery. You would control the product, processing, and distribution. You would need to leave this small coastal fishing village and move to Mexico City, then LA and eventually New York City, where you will run your expanding enterprise.”

The Mexican fisherman asked, “But, how long will this all take?”

To which the American replied, “15 – 20 years.”

“But what then?” Asked the Mexican.

The American laughed and said, “That’s the best part.  When the time is right you would announce an IPO and sell your company stock to the public and become very rich, you would make millions!”

“Millions – then what?”

The American said, “Then you would retire.  Move to a small coastal fishing village where you would sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, take siestas with your wife, stroll to the village in the evenings where you could sip wine and play your guitar with your amigos.”

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I continue to come back to this story as I make decisions about my business and my life. As I said in the first post in this series, what I’ve been working on for awhile is designing my life, and then fitting my business into it. This is in contrast to designing your business, and then working to fit your life into it.

If the Mexican fisherman’s desired life was to sleep late, fish a little, play with his children, take siestas with his wife, and stroll into the village each evening where he would sip wine and play guitar with his amigos, and if he currently had that life now, why in the world would he change it?

Yet so many of us believe that the good life will only come once we retire. Plus, because of debt and the accumulation of too much stuff, we don’t believe that we can afford to do anything but work long hours.

When I retired from vocational ministry, I wasn’t retiring like most people retire. For one thing, I was only 43 years old. But the main difference was that I had another job. So now, instead of two jobs I’d just have one. But I also now had 15-20 extra hours in my week. Even more important, as I mentioned in the last post, I now had mental space that I had not had in a long time. This created a simplicity that I had not experienced.

Scaling is a powerful thing. My business partner has continued to encourage me to give some tasks up. There have been times that I’ve fought that, even though I knew it was the right move. In our real estate development business I’ve handed off more of the finances, we’ve set up systems for purchasing, and we’ve hired a construction manager. This has cost some money of course, but it’s meant that I can allocate those hours elsewhere, plus it means that we are actually functioning better because we’ve hired people better than ourselves for those tasks.

As I wrap up this post, know that I believe in scaling and growth. I just believe that you should ask some questions before automatically implementing these strategies. Live in the tension. That’s what I’m continuing to learn how to do.

Pt. 1: Life Design 101
Pt. 2: Rest and Responsibility
Pt. 4: Life Design – a theological perspective

Last week I shared the first of what I think will be four blog posts on Life Design. Today I want to share another piece to this. This is something that I’ve been thinking about for several years.

As you can see from the slide above, there are two axis: Rest and Responsibility. It’s my belief that all of us were created to carry Responsibility, but I’ve learned that this Responsibility is best carried out when it’s rooted in Rest. There are four quadrants that at a particular point in time we can be living in. They depend on the amount of Rest and Responsibility that we currently have.

When we have the proper amount of Responsibility, and when it’s fueled by the proper amount of Rest, then we are Healthy. That raises the questions, “What is the proper amount of Responsibility, and what is the proper amount of Rest?” There’s not one answer for that. It’s different for every person, and it’s different during different stages of our lives. What is important is that we don’t compare ourselves to others. Our capacities are different. The key to health is that we have the proper amount on our plate. Here’s the big thing I’ve learned about this: when you’re healthy, you know it. You feel fully alive!

The problem comes when we have high Responsibility but low Rest. When this happens, stress enters the picture, and we can easily become Overwhelmed. We all know this feeling. In fact, most of us live much of our lives in this place. And our culture champions us on in this feat: “exhaustion as a status symbol”, according to Brene Brown. We proudly wear our busyness as a badge of honor, and since work isn’t relegated to an office, it’s very tough to shut things off.

Our bodies cannot seem to physiologically get off the adrenaline rush in order to slow down. We battle to make the best use of every spare minute we have. We fear how things might fall apart if we slow down or stop, so we just keep going. We end our days exhausted from the endless demands being placed on us. We know we need to rest and recharge, but who has time for that when the _________ is hanging by a thread? Soon even our “free time” becomes filled with demands as we try to squeeze more “doing” into an already overburdened life.
Peter Scazzero

I think we all know what this feels like.

What happens when there is high Rest but low Responsibility? We become Comfortable. When I left my job as a pastor, Responsibility went WAY down. I wasn’t constantly thinking about how the people I was leading were doing. It was honestly pretty amazing. I had more time on my hands, but more important, I had a mental space that I hadn’t had in a LONG time. While it was a nice change of pace, I knew that having low Responsibility was unsustainable in the long run, just as having low Rest is unsustainable in the long run. I didn’t necessarily want the same level of Responsibility that I had previously had, but there were some things I was still passionate about, and I was going to need to figure out how to still do those things.

“Bored” is the best word I could come up with for the quadrant where there is low Rest and low Responsibility. You might wonder what the difference is between here and Comfortable. The key is that the things you are doing with your downtime aren’t truly leading to Rest. What we think of as rest is often not rest at all. We have to make sure that during our downtime we are actually participating in activities that truly fill our tanks. A little bit of Netflix and social media might be helpful when resting, but too much can end up having negative consequences. The key point here is that having low Responsibility does not automatically mean that you have high Rest.

One thing I’ve learned about this is that there is a vicious cycle at play here. Think back to the last time you were truly Overwhelmed with work, or perhaps even with life itself. You felt that you were running on fumes, and you found yourself desperate for real rest. In that moment the tendency is to think you can crash for a few hours or a few days, and then go back to what you were doing before. It is very easy to simply veg out. However, that may not get you to where you need to be. A deep state of rest leads you to a place where you are no longer striving, and there’s unfortunately no button we can push that brings us to this place.

As of this moment today, I’d say I’m somewhere between the Comfortable and Healthy place. I’m definitely no longer Overwhelmed, and I’m not Bored. My level of Responsibility is not what it was three years ago, but I think it’s at a proper place. Over the past year I’ve invested in a bit of coaching, and I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about what I’m truly passionate about, and where I should invest my time. That has been fruitful work.

Pt. 1: Life Design 101
Pt. 3: Scaling vs Simplicity
Pt. 4: Life Design – a theological perspective