Vitality and Longevity for the Small Business CEO

As you know, the countdown for our Client Appreciation Event is on. We’re less than 2 weeks away, and our team is fine tuning the content and 3D experience of the day. And while our CAE planning officially kicked off in May, I need to tell you a little secret: I’ve been covertly but intentionally feeding our clients and our team action-based learning in this year’s theme: Vitality and Longevity, since January.

You see, I have a thesis about the small business lifespan…

The beginning is not the hard part.

(Per usual, I expect to lose popularity with this opinion).

Don’t get me wrong: the first 2 years to 5 of starting a business are hard. They’re a roller coaster, and you are hustling. You are muscling through and living on adrenaline. Finding product-market fit is fun and exciting for most people. It’s what we love to do, as entrepreneurs.

But then you hit 5 years (assuming you’re one of the 50% of businesses who do), and it gets really hard. It may sound counter-intuitive. Afterall, why would it get harder after more experience?

Because adrenaline isn’t sustainable.

This year, I’ve been using the analogy of becoming middle-aged for a small business’s years 5-10. (This isn’t perfect science, of course. It depends on the lifespan of your business; for some, middle-age happens later). But I consider Ellevated Outcomes to be in one of its first cycles of middle age. And this cycle requires a specific yet more qualitative skillset from the owner and its team. Emotional maturity and endurance. Understanding both of oneself and of the bigger picture. And everyone’s least favorite: patience and discomfort.

So at this years CAE we’re introducing a formula for vitality and longevity:

Vitality and Longevity

=

Balance + Strength + Endurance

Longevity – and certainly vitality – does not come from running sprints around the track. It comes from strength work (probably the exact kind you’re avoiding). Stressing your muscles. Uncomfortable recovery. Making tough (re)balancing choices. And sticking with the regime.

It demands your active, conscious, full body and mind engagement.

If I use Dr. Peter Attia’s recent work in Outlive as an analogy, we can replace the word Medicine 3.0 with “doing business the Ellevated Outcomes way”…

Medicine 3.0 looks at the situation through a longer lens. A forty-year-old should be concerned with her thirty- or forty-year cardiovascular risk profile, not merely her ten-year risk…

Which brings us to the most important difference between Medicine 2.0 and Medicine 3.0.

In Medicine 2.0 you are a passenger on the ship, being carried along somewhat passively. Medicine 3.0 demands much more from you, the patient: You must be well informed, medically literate, clear-eyed about your goals, and cognizant of the true nature of risk.

You must be willing to change ingrained habits, accept new challenges, and venture outside of your comfort zone if necessary. You are always participating, never passive.

You confront problems, even uncomfortable or scary ones, rather than ignoring them until it’s too late. You have skin in the game. You are no longer a passenger on the ship, you are its captain.

Peter Atia, Outlive

Doing business the Ellevated Outcomes way is exactly this. Thinking, planning, acting proactively for your future. Not your tomorrow future. Or even your next week future. Your future-future. You must be willing to change ingrained habits, accept new challenges, and venture outside of your comfort zone. You are participating.

Because I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to go through my middle age, personally or in business, strung out and as a shell of myself. Truth be told: I was doing that for good parts of the past couple years. These days, they say that the 40s and 50s are some of the best decades of your life. You know who you are. What you accept. What you want. And you have lifeforce on your side.

And for me, I’m ready to emerge with vitality. I don’t want Ellevated Outcomes to simply live for a long time. I want it to live well: full of life and vibrancy, both for myself, my crew, and the passengers on my ship.

Dear Clients, we can’t wait to see you on October 19th.