In Sept 2015 I went on a 5 day hike in the Rockies with my daughter and a group from her graduating class. For these young adults this little adventure was about helping them to step outside of their comfort zone. It was about going forward in their lives knowing that they spent 5 days (6 nights) hiking in the Canadian Rockies and overcame challenges they’d never experienced before. In life they will face many challenges and it’s important for them to look back and reflect on times when they had to step outside of their comfort zones and had a positive (possibly amazing) experience.
As a chaperon, this too was an opportunity for me to (once again) step outside my comfort zone. I’d never looked after 6 teenagers in the Rockies before and it had been almost 20 years since I went on my last multi-day adventure in the wilderness.
It was a challenging and amazing experience. We hiked days with 50lb backpacks on our backs (some days we base camped - thankfully). Overall we hiked 40kms over 5 days and I can’t even begin to calculate how much vertical we tackled. We saw some amazing outdoor vistas, I learned some new and wonderful things about my daughter and I was reminded of some very important lessons for life that can be applied to business whether you’re an entrepreneur, in sales or in marketing such as:
1 – Plan, prepare, rehearse and repeat. For this adventure, we had to plan our trip, our routes, our gear and our food. Once we had organized all of this, we had to do a test hike. We had to pack our gear, put on our hiking boots and get a feel for the weight on an actual hike. We had to watch for blisters, test our cooking gear, our tents, etc. and if anything didn’t pass muster we had to go back to the drawing board. Our lives were literally on the line out there and every moment spent preparing mitigates the risk of something terrible happening to us.
In business, you have to plan (business plans, marketing plans, etc,) you have to test and validate and you have to go back to the drawing board and pivot if necessary and try again.
2 - Don’t worry about detours and take the road less travelled. This was a lesson that was driven home to me on the first day of our adventure. Just outside of Field, BC on the way to Calgary, there is a road that takes off to the left. If I’d seen this road once I’d seen it a thousand times on my many many trips to Calgary, but it was a road I’d never taken. Well, we took the road to get to our first campsite and the first leg of our adventure. The road led to Takakkaw Falls, an amazing site, not to be missed and the only way to see it is to take a few moments and get off the highway and go see it.
In business, you have to find undiscovered markets and niches and take that road less travelled to exploit them. You have to trust yourself, endure the questions and the ridicule, the loss of respect from associates and partners, but stay on the road and reap the rewards for that effort. Look for those opportunities in unlikely places, don’t be satisfied with what’s in the marketplace. Don’t be satisfied, always question what’s out there and how to make things better, solve customers’ problems and build a business model around it. You may get laughed at, you may run into skeptics, but you have to try.
3 - Respect your surroundings. On the first day we were on our adventure, another hiker with no connection to our group fell from Twin Falls in the same area of the Rockies we were hiking in. Helicopters were constantly flying over and at one point we saw search crews walking up the river looking for the body. I’m not saying this gentleman wasn’t being careful, I have no idea how he fell over the falls. What I am saying is, even though it’s encouraged to step outside your comfort zone, try to understand the risks. This was a sad reminder to our group that we still need to be careful and not take unnecessary risks.
In business, there are too many stories of companies that have failed because of taking risks without fully understanding the business environment or economic environment and how their decisions adversely impacted their businesses’ futures. Do your research, ask for advice, perform your due diligence, mitigate your risk and make the most informed decisions possible for the benefit of your business.
4 - You’re never too old. There were a number of sketchy sections during the Lake O’Hara leg of our adventure. Sections where you were hiking along a hand-built rocky ledge with a cliff face going up on your right side and a cliff face going down on your left side. At one point as we were climbing up a ridge, we met an elderly gentleman making his way down the ridge. With little or no room to make way for each other there was no option but to make conversation as you tried to pass by each other. His name was Don Gardner. He’s 70 years old. He’s helped build some of the trails around Lake O’Hara and he also hand built birch bark canoes, kayaks and other artifact replications.
It’s a well-known myth that the older you get, the more risk averse you are, but in business if you’re doing what you love keep challenging yourself. Keep learning, keep pushing, keep stepping outside your comfort zone, continue to get stronger and better at what you do. You’re never too old to make a difference in your field and in other peoples’ lives.
The bottom line is this: Stepping outside your comfort zone is important and necessary, but understand the risks in every situation, do your research, your planning and your preparation and don’t ever let your age hold you back.
D
No comments:
Post a Comment