With everything that had transpired in the initial days of 75 Hard and this project roll out... In...
The rain storm had subsided by this point... but I was still dealing with my own personal "storm".
I was searching for solutions, and dealing with self-doubt. With everything that happened up until this point... you really start to wonder, "what else?".
In case you missed it... here is what happened prior.
75 Hard and the company project... and everything else that had transpired up until this point, had really taken its toll on me at this point... and in the midst of it, I felt in over my head.
Mid-Way Through 75 Hard + More Covid+ Job Fair + Accounting Challenges...
You'd think that the first half would be harder than the back half... but oddly enough, it felt like it was the opposite. By the mid way point, I started to ask myself what's the point?
My feet hurt everyday, and to this day do not feel completely recovered. I was tired, and the initial "gains" started to slow down, which killed the excitement of the whole thing.
In my head... I felt the monotony of doing the same route through Wahiawa every day, no matter the time of day, starting to set in.
There was the thought, that I could get the project done sooner if I just utilized the time spent on the two a day workouts, towards getting it done. The feeling that I wasn't getting much incremental benefit from the work outs and completing this challenge crossed my mind.
These were all just reasons for quitting early. By this point, there was no motivation... and it was the discipline that carried me through the mid-way point.
I thought several times about quitting, but knew I wasn't about to quit before Adam did.. and he wasn't about to quit until I did. We are both too stubborn.
By this point, every muscle in my body had some sort of fatigue. We picked the day's workout by "what didn't hurt" that day. We were still hitting PRs on our lifts, and those little wins felt good. As beat down as I was, there was progress being made.
I felt like there was no end in sight to the chaos that was coming about. By this point... I felt that if I hadn't already, I had hit a rock bottom.... but wait... there's more!
More Covid...
Several more team members came down with COVID... which left us short handed, yet again. It felt like each time we dealt with an issue, another one came about. It was a defeating feeling.
Shortly after, both Adam and I came down with it.. and we almost fell flat on our faces. Both Adam and I had to drag ourselves through the work outs... because there were no excuses. Otherwise, we'd have to start over.
Not only was I physically fatigued from illness and the workouts, but mentally and emotionally... I was drained from getting "kicked in the teeth" with each turn of events up until this point.
In the background... there was a shift within our team!
One by one... the team started to follow and pick up healthy habits!
One of our employees quit drinking, and started working out everyday with us after work. He partnered up with another one of his teammates, and they held each other accountable.
Next... another pair of employees hopped in.
I realized that people were looking at us, and being influenced by what we were doing. It was a positive change within our company, and I seen it start to produce results in their work.
They had more focus, and energy. They were more positive, and had a sense of confidence and accountability.
Each time I thought about quitting, I thought about the others that we were positively influencing.
Job Fair...
I still needed to recruit more employees. The exercise that I went through showed it. We were still tracking our progress on our daily spreadsheet, still having our team huddles and still building out new infrastructure to our build out everyday. The fact of the matter was that we had unleashed something that did not have enough hands for.
It was a good problem, but the responsible thing to do is to always have enough resources to take care of your customers!
We decided that we needed to throw a hiring fair.
It was the first that I've ever experienced and really didn't know what to expect. There were lots of doubts running through my mind...
What if people don't show up? Will this be a waste of time? Why would anyone come to our hiring fair? Regardless... we planned it. Adam took on quite a bit to get it going! He planned a presentation, rehearsed it and corresponded with all of the interested attendees.
We threw the event on a Friday afternoon... and it ran until nearly 8:30 that night. Against all expectation, it was a HIT!
We found great candidates for every position that we were looking for... even the ones that we didn't openly advertise for the job fair!
We got back to the house later that evening, and on our late night walk... I remember saying that this was the first win in a long time.
I felt as it maybe... just maybe the tides were turning.
We got our first big win! I felt like maybe this was the point where things turn around... What I didn't know was we weren't out of the woods just yet...
Accounting Challenges...
With everything that had transpired from this point up since December, there was a looming problem. In rolling out the new systems and processes, there was a blind spot in what we were doing.
We were under prepared in the realm of how everything tied back into our accounting systems and processes... which required us to look at things and adjust on the fly.
It's been years since I had to get involved in our day to day accounting, and it was another "kick in the teeth" when I seen the state of our books.
Luckily, the changes that I made and the hires that we brought on allowed me the time to dive in on this... I worked on getting updated accounting processes in place, making sure that the team was adequately prepared and spent time doing "clean up".
The actual challenges were smaller than the previous... but by this point, it "felt" bigger than it was.
This project happening concurrently and the fatigue debt that had been accrued, made things just that much harder.
By this point... I felt that my "mental measuring cup" of what was "hard" had changed. This was just another challenge that needed to be pushed through.
It was the "boring work" that needs to be done to achieve the mission.
I started to look at the challenges and own them. "I wanted this, so I need to get through it..." is what I told myself.
