Do Hard Things

“The impediment to the action becomes the action. What stands in the way becomes the way.”

Marcus Aurelius.

What did you learn from your favourite downturn?

My top four are at the end.

When the tsunami comes we will all react differently, but everyone wants to get ahead of the wave.

🟣 Well… start now. Do hard things now.

Envision the future and imagine the foment. Feel the swirl. Get anxious and dizzy because negative visualisation is a powerful motivational force, the stoics recommend doing it every day.

(Anxiety is a spur to action and you can be dizzy thinking about exciting new vistas.)

Here are 11 things you might do, after you accept living off the land in Orkney won’t butter the artisan gingerbread:

1. Start earlier and stay later
2. Sort your Zoom set-up and look out proper shirts
3. Put your hand up a lot and say “I’ll do that”
4. Be grateful for 100 things… and 100 more
5. Want big change, then realise much is in the detail
6. Network, reach out, be more present
7. Quietly stop quiet quitting
8. Get fit in mind and body
9. Find spare capacity everywhere
10. Take personal responsibility
11. Focus, commit and take action

You’ll be going go into the office more too, or at least trying out proper shoes and looking at train timetables.

🟣 What would you add?

Once you are not in Orkney you will do hard things, because there is no alternative.

(By the way, that croft would have you on 16 hour days every day and it’s dark from 3pm to 9am in winter.)

So…

🟣 Start today. Do hard things now.

And finally, those four downturns:

1️⃣ The financial crash in 2008 cut KWC Global by nearly half. We moved back home, out of our city centre office.

Lesson: Change is a catalyst. We created Rainmaker, selling for professionals, now our lodestar programme.

2️⃣ Lockdown in March 2020 stopped us in our tracks- everything came out of the diary- but Zoom gave us a pulse.

Lesson: Take risks. We pushed the big button that said “go for it” in September and now KWC Global marches to a worldwide beat.

3️⃣ Leaving Uni after six years with two degrees, two national design awards got me as far as Hamilton, designing houses on Jim’s dining room table.

Lesson: You’re not Le Corbusier.

4️⃣ Going unpaid for six months after doubling the mortgage, halving household income and having a baby as interest rates climbed to 15% was intense.

Lesson: Attitude trumps ability all day long. And money matters a lot, but not as much as you think.