This is the 292nd issue of With A Shout; this week, we are going "Lo-Fi" for a while.  Shorter installments highlight a single story, dig deeper, and reduce some of the typical daily sections.  Growth is good, so is taking a step back to look at what you’ve written, what worked and what didn’t.  With A Shout has published 200,000 words over the past 9 months, all in the pursuit of finding a voice.  Our voice has an edge forged by a Gen X spirit and years of experience in business, media, and life.  We want our writing to find inspiration in the stories we highlight and the humor each story makes us think about.  Sometimes topical and current, timeless in others, we are grateful there is an abundance of excellent writing, stories, videos, and music for us to curate, hopefully, enhance, and recommend.  We like the voice we’ve developed so far; next, we need to see if an audience exists for it.

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Traditional education is only the best path for some of us.  After a mediocre showing at three colleges, I stepped down (dropped out) while building my first business.  After several costly business mistakes, I returned to the books to learn what I needed to know.  The goal always drives me; math is just a bunch of numbers until you put a dollar sign in front of them.  Dollars make sense to me, and the goal is clear.  Algebra in the middle of a six-figure higher education investment does NOT make sense.  Post general studies and in the middle of running a business, I went to books and people to find the answers I needed to run a successful business.  This was Pre-Internet.  

The excitement of early business success is like a lottery with odds.  The odds increase in your favor the harder you work, but in the end, there is a large amount of luck when you really look at the numbers.  The other benefit to doing this when you are young is everything you have yet to see.  Starting a business, hiring employees, finding customers, paying taxes, and all the other things you must do when running a business takes a toll.  The mystery of doing something you've never done before is a blessing.  Often people say it's challenging to start a business later in life because you need more energy.  There is truth to that, but in my case, it's not energy; it's experience.  After 25 years of building businesses, I know the challenges, the failure rates, the costs, and all the stress points that come from running a business.  If I had known half of them when I started, I never would have started a business.

The best illustration is this.  Hood To Coast is a 197-mile relay race in Portland, Oregon.  12 people run 3 legs each over days from the base of Mount Hood to the beach at Seaside.  Leg 29, the third leg for one of the runners, is a steep climb up 700 feet in 3 miles; it's like running up stairs without the stairs for 3 miles.  I have run this leg twice; the second time was twice as hard as the first.  I knew where the top was when I ran it the second time; the first time was hard, but I just kept running, one foot in front of the other, and I thought about nothing else until I reached the top.  The second time, I knew where I was and how far from the top, and I also knew I had accomplished the incredible challenge; hitting the top a second time would not feel as satisfying.

Starting another business is the same; many pitfalls are known, and the achievement will differ.  At the beginning of starting a business or challenge number 2, 3, and so on, it's easier to trick yourself and play the "doubt me" game; after a while, no one doubts you anymore, and it's difficult to fake it.

If the goal is learning, especially lifelong learning, success is secondary to the work.  If the goal is to love the work, especially after a career of doing work, it will be easier to find work you love.  This piece was inspired by a story on Medium written by Philippe Vandenbroeck called Meeting my better self.  The line from Vandenbroeck's story that sparked my story is this:

Instead of chasing retirement and the promise of an easier life, changing what you are chasing might make sense.  These days I'm more interested in racking up missed shots taken than looking at the retirement funds.

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Fishing The Sky.

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With A Shout newsletter is written by Johnny Christian with the support of a thousand idea bits and the help of many people.

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