Anyone who has attended or viewed a major league baseball game has likely witnessed one of the scariest moments a baseball player can experience – the inevitable time in which he loses grip of the bat he is swinging and it flies off, hopefully, safely landing on the turf somewhere.

Now some might wonder why this happens so often – is it because they are swinging the bat so hard they simply can’t hang on?

The reality lies in proper technique. Every player at some level has received hitting advice that goes something like this:

“Do not squeeze the bat. Hold it lightly in your fingers. Pretend as though you are holding a small bird in your hands. You want to hold the bird firmly enough to prevent it from flying away, yet not so tightly that you harm the bird.” (Source: beabetterhitter.com)

And there you have it – some of the best business advice I can offer.

All too often business owners hold tightly and desperately to what they think they must do in every day in order to achieve their goals.

This smothering attachment to outcomes is the greatest source of stress and frustration felt by many of the business owners I encounter.

And that little bird of a business suffocates as a result.

So you see the secret to success truly does lie in your grip.

I’m all for goals and setting a vision for where you want to go, but then you’ve got to detach from the day to day judgment on how you’re meant to get there.

You can’t be afraid to let lose of the bat.

Gripping tightly is what leads to feeling so busy. It’s what tricks you into thinking that because you checked eight things off your to-do list that you accomplished a lot.

You know this, but I’ll remind you – there’s a really good chance that 80% of what you do each day is wasted. Okay, maybe it’s not all wasted, but it’s likely not moving you in the direction of your vision.

When you start to let go of the fear of not being busy, you can open up the possibility of actually finding the very few things that will make a difference in your business.

Oh, and people might actually enjoy being around you more as well.

Starting today, pledge to let go more. Loosen your grip and figure out the two or three things that matter today. Then go to work on them. (PS – Meditation and Yoga – I suggest it!)

Summer is finally giving way to Fall in the Northern Hemisphere. It’s a cycle that plays out each year and it’s one of the things I love best about living in the Midwest. The change in season is both dramatic and distinct – you can see it and feel it and you know with a high degree of certainty that you’ll go through it again around this time next year.

I believe there are four distinct phases or seasons that most entrepreneurs experience as they move from start-up to traction to growth and profit. These “seasons” are part of how we move from one phase of business to the next and often reappear in a natural progression. Of course, this observation is one of hindsight, gained from building my own business for over twenty years, because, unlike the turning and tumbling leaves that signal fall, the seasons of the entrepreneur are much more difficult to detect – but look for them and you will see.

For me the seasons of the entrepreneur could be called Plan, Discover, Evolve, and Grow – to further the season metaphor – these easily line up with the attributes we most associate with Summer, Fall, Winter, and Spring.

The first “set of seasons” for the typical startup are somewhat prescriptive as they relate to the foundational steps that any business must traverse in getting started. With each subsequent cycle, however, they are far less evident, but still important to both observe and guide intentionally.

Plan

In the early stages of an organization, everything is about the plan and planning – at least until it’s time to test the plan. At that point the work turns toward Discovery – what have we really built, why don’t people get it, what’s the real problem our prospects want us to solve, who should we target now?

In many ways, these are questions organizations don’t want to ask and certainly don’t want to have to answer because they aren’t in the plan. Let me warn you about plans. Plans are worthless; planning is everything, and it never ends. To paraphrase a well-worn saying – “Everyone has a plan until your product solves a problem nobody seems to realize they have.”

Discover

Your plan is little more than a hypothesis; Discovery is what you do in the lab of the customer. It’s how you figure out what people actually want or more importantly what they are willing to pay for. (Sadly, this isn’t always what they need.)

Just like planning, discovery never ends. In fact, in the best companies, discovery is culture. Every message, product, promotion, service, and initiative is created not for the customer, but with the customer. Discovery is innovation through collaboration.

Evolve

This phase happens about the time you think you have it figured out. Fall merges into Winter and where I live that transition kind of sneaks up on you and smacks you right in the face. You know it’s coming, but you don’t act like you believe it.

In some instances, the need to evolve significant strategic aspects of a business arises every 90 days or so. In others, the cycle is much longer. The point is that every business must go through some form of evolution to prepare for growth. You can take a proactive approach through constant discovery or a reactive approach as you try to figure out why your sales are stale and lagging.

Sometimes a business needs to evolve because what they are doing isn’t working as planned and they need to, as is fashionable to say today, “pivot.”

In other cases, a business has successfully grown to where they need to start doing things that seemed laughable in the beginning. They need to focus on process management, hiring, culture, community and letting go of what they thought their company was.

This is “crash and burn” time for many organizations as it can be the place where the organization outgrows the founder. In my experience, this phase manifests as recurring cycles of expansion and contraction. For many organizations, it creates the kind of friction that isn’t quite enough to create failure, but certainly is a catalyst for frustration, endless, soul-sapping frustration.

And now for the bad news – just kidding!

Grow

When an organization finds that evolution is hopelessly energizing and freeing something magical – at least for this season – can emerge.

That thing is growth – Growth is vaguely what every entrepreneur wants. I say vaguely because every entrepreneur has a different vision of what growth looks like. The fact is that no one knows what it looks like until they’ve come out the other end of it – and only then if they were paying attention during the chaos.

It’s not so much a definition problem as it is a measurement problem. Growth comes from the accomplishment of some goal or objective and the myriad of metrics we might use to assess this accomplishment.

One thing is certain – those who hypothesize, experiment, analyze, measure, and adjust the most tend to experience the revenue trends commonly associated with growth. It’s at this point that the seasons turn inward.

Eventually, entrepreneurs experience their seasons in a distinctly different manner than those presented by nature.

Start-ups have the ability to experience every season as a first. As they stay with it and become consumed with what they are building, they start to witness the edges of seasons rolling in upon themselves in complex overlapping patterns that allow them to at once experience every season inside of one spiraling season. The disorienting nature of this experience creates moments of extreme clarity mixed with equal moments of extreme doubt – Success rolled into failure. (In case you were wondering what you were feeling just now.)

But, tell me this – why would you do anything else with your life?

I read a lot.

I interview authors for my weekly podcast so over the last decade or so I’ve probably read some portion of over 1,000 books.

Just as every High School Language or Literature teacher, I believe that reading is the key to better writing. As an entrepreneur I believe it’s is the key to better ideas, better presenting, better selling, better leadership, and perhaps even most innovation.

One of the tricks I stumbled upon many years ago was the art of picking non-business books and reading them with a business filter. So, in other words, looking for business ideas in books that were not necessarily written for that purpose.

Books on math and architecture and history often contain business metaphors and connections that you won’t find anywhere else – if you read them in that light.

But, this must be an intentional practice if it is to become an element of your personal and business development. You must seek out books beyond your current echo chamber and perhaps even explore subjects that don’t excite you or even make you a little uncomfortable.

This summer I’ve read four books in particular that fit into my description of “not purely business” and I would like to share my thoughts on each.

The Hour of Land: A Personal Topography of America’s National Parks – by Terry Tempest Williams

Williams is a noted feminist and naturalist so no surprise she’s pretty hard of some of the environmental threats to out National Parks – most notably taking on fracking in and around Theodore Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota. However, she also does an amazing job walking the fine line of justification given for the creation of what most Americans see as our national treasure. Mount Rushmore, for example, seen as an American icon, was in fact carved into the face of one of the most sacred places of the Lakota Sioux Nation.

My application – this book is a great example of colorful and descriptive writing and storytelling – something that all marketers can do better. It is also a great example of crafting arguments for and against something in a way that acknowledges that there is no black and white to any idea – it’s a great practice in “yes and” as opposed to “yes but” thinking.

Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption – by Bryan Stevenson

This is the true story of one young attorney’s life-long dedication to fighting a biased legal justice system that is perhaps finally coming to light through the tragic and violent actions involving police forces and the communities they serve in the United States.

Stevenson founded the Equal Justice Initiative that fights daily to help death row inmates and underrepresented populations get justice in the courts. The history, opinions, and facts are held together by the telling of one particularly unjust imprisonment and Stevenson’s role in reversing a death sentence.

While the entire read is an important one for those trying to understand some of the current racial tension in this nation, my biggest takeaway was Stevenson’s admission that we are all broken in some fashion and we will only grow when we acknowledge that first.

“We are all broken by something. We have all hurt someone and have been hurt. We all share the condition of brokenness even if our brokenness is not equivalent. I desperately wanted mercy for Jimmy Dill and would have done anything to create justice for him, but I couldn’t pretend that his struggle was disconnected from my own. The ways in which I have been hurt—and have hurt others—are different from the ways Jimmy Dill suffered and caused suffering. But our shared brokenness connected us.”

How to Live a Good Life: Soulful Stories, Surprising Science, and Practical Wisdom – by Jonathan Fields

Jonathan Fields is someone I consider a friend and he’s just one of those rare people that you feel good about being around.

How to Live a Good Life is not out until October of 2016, but I had the chance to read and advance copy and this is Jonathan’s best work in my opinion.  He has carefully summarized something many of know – in order to live fully you have to pay attention to what you do with every single day.

A good life is intentional, and it might even be more work that living and unexamined life, but it’s the only reason we exist. Fields shows you how to set up the many buckets in your life – not a new idea, I just happen to like his buckets better.

As a business owner I learned ago that there is no such thing as balance – only joy and not joy – so you better love what you’re doing and find a way to create a business that serves your life.

We all teach something – like it or not, know it or not – but how conscious are we of the act.

Professional teachers have had a profound impact on my life – Perhaps more than my parents in some very important ways.

• I’m reminded of my 7th-grade history teacher and basketball coach who felt it important that he also teach us boys about respecting the women who came in and out of our lives.
• I often think about my high school English and Literature teacher who truthfully opened up the world of books to me. Although I suspect he would cringe at the thought I acknowledged his impact in my first book.
• I’m even driven to this day by my Freshman Latin teacher who thought it important that he tell me I would never amount to much in life. (I wonder how many other people he labeled as such and I wonder how many believed him.)

I’ve learned a great deal from teachers but I’ve learned even more through the act of teaching.

It’s a well-known fact that if you want to learn something very well then force yourself to teach it to others. Scientists even have a name for it “the protege effect.”

You will prepare differently, you will view what you learn differently, you will research more thoroughly and you will work out how to communicate what you’ve learned in a simple manner – and that’s actually the key to the greatest knowledge – the ability to simplify the complex.

In fact, just approaching learning as if you are expected to teach what you learn – even if that’s not going to be the case – dramatically improves recall and cognition.

So, here’s my point – Entrepreneurs teach in order to grow. Approach every task, process, conversation as moments to teach and by doing so – learn.

Action Idea: Everyday presents an opportunity to learn and to teach – seize teaching today!

Pretty much anyone who has chased a dream – launched a product, opened a business, set a goal – has experienced moments of fear. In some cases fear so gripping it derails, but mostly fear cloaked in some form of self-doubt that’s just strong enough to keep you stuck where you are.

When I experience long stretches of uninspired effort and excitement, I know it’s time to revisit the essence of my dream.

See, my dream only looks like building a successful business. It’s why I do what I do that’s at the core of my aspirations – and that’s what I must protect at all times. Reaching my dream requires that I get up every single day ready to fearlessly tackle the world of my highest priorities, even against the constant pounding of the world pushing against me. Sure, dramatic, but I’m guessing some of you know that feeling.

When I do feel I’ve veered off the path or landed in a deep rut, I find my way back to center by assessing how I’m doing in the following three areas.

Am I giving more than I take – and mindful of the ratio

This one is huge because at the core my business is about service. If I ever grip too tight on the idea of gain, I fall out of the balance it takes to serve. When I focus on giving – advice, mentoring, ideas, time, treasure – the universe seems to take care of what I receive. Experience tells me there is truth in this only if you can set the right intention for where you are headed and then detach from how you actually get there.

Am I helping those who need help – not just those who can help me

I was having a conversation with a friend, and he asked me what I thought of those endorsement requests people send via LinkedIn. I told him I thought they were silly because nobody pays attention to those and why would I endorse someone I might not even know?

I brushed his response aside, and then a day or so later it hit me like a ton of bricks. He said, sure, but what if a little thing like that meant a lot to that person? What if, they valued the gesture far more than you did – what would that cost you?

It made me think about how easy it is in the rush of trying to grow a business or brand to forget how easy it is to help others – even if they have no apparent way to help you.

Am I letting myself be vulnerable – it’s the only way people can help me

This is by far my greatest challenge. I want to be right, I want to have the answer, I can do it all myself. That’s what my ego tells me and in some instances, it’s what moves me forward, but it’s also a sure-fire way to miss incredible opportunities.

People naturally want to help when their help is seen as needed, useful and invited.

Letting go of being right, asking others for their opinion and being open and interested in the dreams of others is how you invite people and ideas into your dream that are equipped to help you strip away layers of fear and even elevate your vision to places you had not even considered hauling it.

That’s all for today – thanks for letting me share!