If it’s too hard, it’s called a growth opportunity

This has been a very difficult year for me. You might not know it from my site because I haven’t written here since January. You might not know it from my podcast, because it’s not all been business. You might not know it from my Twitter because I tend to leave the personal stuff off of there. For better or for worse.

Here is a look at just a few things that happened this year.

1. My company rewrote our main revenue generating product. This was a huge undertaking and created all kinds of stress and challenges for our small team.
2. We stopped growing the business. That’s a little misleading. This wasn’t intentional, but because we were so focused on our product rewrite we didn’t have the time, energy, or focus to market or expand our reach. We just coasted and that created some financial challenges. Nothing we couldn’t handle, but added to the overall stress that already existed.
3. Due to an accounting error from a previous bookkeeper I found out that I owed thousands in back taxes. While the business is doing great, no one loves getting that news. While we were able to pay it, we took a hit in other areas that we had not otherwise planned for.
4. And last, but most certainly not least, my brother had a stroke.

To give a little more perspective on that last one, my brother lives in New York and I live in Tennessee. Our father lives in San Antonio and is far too limited to do anything about this so it all falls to me. A responsibility I gladly bear as I love my brother dearly.

My brother is currently in an assisted living situation. He can’t handle his finances, insurance, or anything else for that matter. All he can do is work on getting better. Whatever that may mean for him. So I am handling his life for the foreseeable future. Which is hard when you are over 700 miles away.

That’s a little about the situation, but not really the point of my writing this.

In one of my phone calls with my brother he was explaining the struggle of his physical therapy when he told me, “They’re asking me to do things I’m not able to do.” In his current state of mind that was a reason to not try. He was frustrated and thought that they were being insensitive to his condition.

I wonder how many times we do the same thing in our lives and businesses? How many times are we not willing to innovate, change our prices, grow our teams, improve our lives, because it’s not something we know how to do or it seems too difficult?

I’ll tell you what I told my brother.

Let the simplicity of that thought sink in.

For my brother that meant if he didn’t work at rolling over he would never be ready to work on sitting up. If he didn’t work on standing he would never be ready to tackle walking. That’s a sobering thought so I’ll leave you with this…