“A Good Plan, Violently Executed Now, Is Better Than a Perfect Plan Next Week.”
–General George S. Patton
Today I want to take a bit of time here to share with you a little bit of my own personal history in the business world.
I was recently doing some thinking and realized that I probably needed to do a better job of sharing some personal experiences as it’s easy to fall into the trap of applying principles of philosophy and events of history when looking at the world while not focusing as much on sharing more of my own background. I realize it’s important to share more in order to illustrate how life has shaped my own perspective and how those experiences have fed into the creation of this very blog and podcast.
To give you some insight on this I think I’ll start by diving into some of the struggles and failures I’ve personally encountered as a small business owner in order to give you a dose of objective reality in terms of the challenges that not only myself, but how most all small business owners face in the day to day of being inside the arena of business and life.
Now keep in mind that I fully understand that everyone has their own perspectives and lived experience, but when it comes to individuals who choose to go out into the world in order to create something out of thin air, the world is not a friendly place for those people at times.
Furthermore, I want to point out that individual’s being able to go out and create something from nothing, to pursue a dream (like the pursuit of happiness), and to create as much independence as possible within a free, or now a more quasi-free society, is something that is seemingly diminishing more and more by the day.
The traditional American spirit of rugged individualism and pioneering is now giving way to a massive corporatocracy driven by centralized control of a big corporate and big government merger.
This partnership gets many people in society to buy into that model while also getting those same people to diminish more and more of their support for that rugged individual who visualizes a world where he or she can blaze their own trail without getting resistance from those people who claim to believe the same things as they do.
This problem continues to grow because in reality much of society doesn’t recognize or demonstrate their support for many of these pioneering individuals with their dollars and their votes, or if they do that trailblazer must end up sacrificing a lot more in life in order to achieve that support from the observing consumer public.
In other words, many small business owners may run the risk of experiencing a Pyrrhic Victory, or form of success in their very attempt to pursue the more difficult to achieve American dream in this day and age.
I can attest to this personally as when I started my fitness business back in 2005 I had to endure a bit of a rough start.
In the first few months I had unknowingly gotten mixed up in some corrupt business relationships with dishonest and greedy people. These people couldn’t make intelligent decisions because they were so concerned about the money that they weren’t even capable of seeing their unethical and illegal breach of our contract as they were trying to broker a deal with me for renting some space.
This was a huge wake up call for me as I had come in contact with this married couple who at that time were some of the worst people that I would ever encounter in my life in terms of business, but I wouldn’t learn that until later on at the point of negotiation.
As the story goes I had gotten tied up in a sublease agreement to have a training facility in order to move my fitness and athletic students into in order to have some floor space to work with them.
I had acquired these students from brokering a deal of my own with a previous facility, who I also had a previous sublease with, but they would ultimately fail at paying their lease to the building owner which resulted in me having to exit the premises because my lease was with the leasee, not the building owner.
Because I found myself in a bind with having to get another training facility to now move three teams of athletes into in order to train, against my own best judgement I ended up agreeing to another sublease with this couple I had met who owned a baseball and softball facility with batting cages.
Granted I was young and very ambitious, but I was probably a bit too honest and shared a bit too much with this couple up front as I had communicated that I needed to find a place to house my athletes due to the previous situation that placed me into the difficult circumstance I found myself in.
However, I ended up signing a short term sublease with them and I had some space to work, but would have to share some of the space that these new owners used for their batting cages.
The agreement was that I could use space from their cages for a designated period of time daily that we both agreed to with the signing of the short term lease which was only about a two month commitment.
The owners, or the couple, of this new facility told me that they were renovating some new space across the parking lot from where we would agree to train my students in the short term.
Their proposed idea was that we would negotiate another lease after the short lease had expired and I could move into the newly renovated space across the parking lot at that point.
So what happened next?
Well as the date approached for the expiration of our short term lease the new space was not renovated. It was basically just a metal building with no heat or air-conditioning, no facilities, no office, and the roof was leaking water down onto the floor where I’d theoretically be training my students once we would have made the move.
However, the expiration of our old agreement came and went because our negotiations regarding the so-called renovated space across the parking lot would have to be postponed due to the fact that the husband of the husband and wife duo ended up getting diagnosed with cancer.
However, going back to the beginning of our initial two month agreement I started noticing problems with this particular professional working relationship as the couple would violate our space and contract with the use of their side of the business regarding their batting lessons for the athletes that came in.
This was problematic as we needed to use the space that we had agreed to pay for under contract to train the athletes we had at the time in order to operate my business.
Without getting too much into detail this immediately started causing a major problem and was something I recognized was an immediate breach of trust. This was an immediate red flag to me.
As a result I made an executive decision to start looking for another space a couple months prior to the coming sit down I knew we were going to have regarding the negotiation of the space they had proposed I move into at the end of our first contract.
The Negotiation
It ended up being a smart decision on my part to move forward with finding an alternative space to settle into yet again.
I was fortunate to be successful in finally meeting with a sane and grounded individual who would end up being a new tenant that I would negotiate a third space with in order to train my students. However, before this happened I still had to have the final sit down with the alarming couple that I was dealing with at the time.
Because I had initiated the meeting with the third guy that offered me the best option I knew going into the negotiation with the questionable couple that I had some leverage that they were unaware of at the point of the meeting.
However, when it came time for the meeting the husband did not show and instead sent his wife as he was allegedly getting medical treatment for his condition.
I know that I already touched on some of the context of this negotiation, but what I didn’t touch on is that I also knew going into this that the so-called renovated space that wasn’t renovated was also considerably smaller in terms of square footage than the temporary space we had agreed to with our previous two month contract.
So to sum this up the potential new space was smaller, it had no facilities, it didn’t have air-conditioning, it didn’t have heat, and it had a leaking roof that the couple said they would fix, but didn’t.
As you may imagine this all was about to get very interesting at the coming negotiation.
Having said that, when the time came for me to sit down with the wife she showed her true colors and had the nerve to write out on a piece of paper a proposed rent amount that was considerably higher than what we had previously paid for the temporary space.
It was at this moment that I had calculated correctly ahead of time coming into the meeting where I believed that she believed that she would have me cornered. She believed that in order for me to run my business that she would put forth a totally unreasonable offer that she (and her husband) believed I would be forced to take.
They were confident that they could leverage the situation because they believed that I had no other options and that I would have nowhere else to go. However, because I was proactive about the situation I did have somewhere else to go and as a result created leverage for myself.
The look on her face was priceless when I counter-offered. Because of her ego she wouldn’t relent and then I made sure to laugh when I got up from the table and left to go and secure the deal with the guy I had already previously negotiated with to give me a fallback plan.
Now why did I go to the trouble to tell you about all of this?
Well, after the loss of having to move my students under pressure I wanted to communicate to you this process and to give you a deeper understanding as to how all of this actually worked throughout the experience.
That night after I had sat with the wife, her husband called me on the phone to yell at me and felt the need to call me quite a few names. The next morning when I went to get my equipment to move out he confronted me there at the facility and yelled even more threats at me both personally and professionally.
It was at this moment that I reminded him how much he was in the wrong and that if he continued with his threats that I would be very determined to end his motivation for launching them.
At this point the situation was neutralized.
During that particular experience I learned a lot. I learned that not all people who pretend to be your friend are your friends and also learned that life threatening illness doesn’t always bring about the humble qualities of people even though they may be facing down their own mortality.
I also learned that those people who are purely driven by greed will try to walk over anyone and everyone in their path until someone else pushes back.
In short, the entire process was a reckoning that I realized was hurtling towards a terminus in which I had to determine on which point of the line it would end up.
The Pyrrhic Victory
Oftentimes people will ignore, or just flat out fail to consider the possible outcomes of an objective reality when they believe they are in the right. However, the issue here is that the belief of one thinking they are in the right can often be confused by one simply trying to satisfy and prop up their own ego.
Victory isn’t always something that is nice and shiny and perfect. Victory and the pursuit of victory can often be something that leads to one’s own destruction.
In the case of that couple I found myself having to deal with, they believed they were pursuing and about to achieve a major victory, but at the end of the day they got absolutely nothing. However, I also recognized that in order for myself to succeed I had to put aside my ego and hit the ground running by working hard on a solution for the problem I was dealing with at that time.
It wasn’t easy and it cost me a great deal of time and money, but at the end of the day I managed to work out a viable solution.
In 280 BC King Pyrrhus of Epirus fought and defeated the Romans at the battle of Heraclea, as well as the battle of Asculum in 279 BC. (Source: Wikipedia).
As it turns out even though the king was able to achieve victory he did so at such a great toll and strain that even as the victor it was viewed as being equivalent to a defeat.
Such a victory is so costly that it negates any true sense of achievement and damages long-term progress. As a result this is where the term Pyrrhic Victory originated. Ah there’s that term again.
After giving my own personal example of dealing with some of my own struggles in business, those struggles were costly and I was able to pull out a victory, or solution in that last scenario in the end.
However, I knew that I had to take some serious action in order to create and/or find a solution that I could live with at the moment. I knew the entire experience would cost me a great deal even if I came out on top, but I had to make sure that even if that deal resulted in a victory that it wouldn’t be a Pyrrhic Victory.
The Journey of Mankind
As I was brainstorming about ideas for a good blog and podcast topic I decided to share with you this experience I had when I started my fitness business.
In my own journey in the fitness industry this particular experience that I’ve outlined for you here in this episode gave me a deeper understanding of human nature and certain people’s motivations. Granted this experience wasn’t pleasant in the least, however the value of the experience has proven to be a lifesaver for me on more than one occasion.
As a result I have the opportunity to share that very experience with you here on this blog and podcast episode.
With that in mind I’m going to shift gears on you for just a bit here.
At the beginning of Stanley Kubrick’s iconic movie 2001: Space Odyssey there is a view of some open barren land with some prehistoric ape-like beings living within some caverns and out on the open fields.
During this scene it shows a time of their struggles with hostile predators attacking them, as well as rival gangs of other ape-like beings aggressively running in on their territory and fighting them.
After a few distressing encounters with various predators the ape-like beings were visibly shaken one night as they fell asleep in their caverns.
The next morning they awakened in shock to see a huge monolith that was solid black sitting on the ground in the center of their dwelling.
They were initially overcome by fear, but eventually would calm down and one of the ape-like beings would move close enough to the monolith to reach out with his hand to touch it.
The next scene shows this ape-being sitting in a field with bones of decomposed animals. As the creature is sitting there it starts looking really close at a thigh bone and grabs it with its hand to pick it up.
At this point the apeman starts to somewhat swing the thigh bone down onto another pile of bones to hit them. As it sees how hitting the other bones breaks those bones it starts to realize how to use the thigh bone as a tool, an instrument, or weapon. In other words, there’s a clear advancement in intelligence with its discovery of the use of the bone as a tool.
The next scene then shows how the apeman uses the tool to hunt for food and then again as a weapon to protect the family of his tribe being attacked again by the rival gang of apes as it managed to kill one scaring off the other invaders.
From here the scene changes yet again by leaping ahead millions of years into the future with Dr. Heywood Floyd sleeping on a spaceship on a flight headed towards an American lunar outpost.
The doctor awakens to have a couple of different meetings to discuss the purpose of his journey. He’s very secretive about the mission, but stresses to the crew that his secrecy on the issue is of utmost importance.
Later we see this doctor exiting a base to walk out onto the surface of the moon with a group of other men to an excavation site on the moon.
At the center and bottom of this excavation site is another similar monolith that appeared in the beginning with the apemen. The men gather around the monolith taking pictures and the doctor walks up close enough to reach out and touch the monolith.
From here the scene changes yet again to a spaceship that is on a course heading towards Jupiter 18 months later. On this ship there are two astronauts, along with three others in suspended animation, and a Heuristically programmed ALgorithmic computer (HAL) that uses its systems to pilot the ship.
To shorten and simplify the plot HAL essentially makes what the astronauts determine to be an error aboard the ship which shakes the trust of the two astronauts Dr. Dave Bowman and Dr. Frank Poole.
Later HAL causes the death of Dr. Frank Poole by sabotaging his attempt to replace an outside antenna by taking control of his mobile pod and setting him adrift into space. HAL also turned off the life support systems of the suspended crewmen, killing them. Dave responds by getting a pod of his own to go and retrieve Frank’s body, but upon his return HAL refuses to let Dave enter the ship bay.
Dave releases Frank’s body and manages to successfully get onboard the ship by crossing the vacuum to enter the ship manually without his space helmet.
Upon entry Dave immediately moves to disconnect HAL’s circuits and when he manages to do so receives a pre-recorded message from Dr. Heywood Floyd talking about the purpose of the mission.
Dr. Heywood Floyd talks about the discovery of evidence of other intelligent life while referencing the monolith and how it was sending a strong radio signal towards Jupiter.
Not long after this Dave discovers a third monolith orbiting the planet. Dave leaves the Discovery (the main ship) in his pod to investigate and immediately gets pulled into a bizarre vortex of colored light and observes very odd lighting and landscapes in colored light as he passes by.
Then oddly he finds himself in a classical bedroom where he sees different versions of himself, then becomes those versions of himself, in three different instances each time with him getting older and older.
The first time he’s in his space suit exploring the bedroom and place he finds himself in, the second time he sees an old man version of himself eating a meal, and finally he sees himself close to death on the bed.
It’s at this final phase when he’s on his bed where he points to the foot of his bed to see the monolith floating just above the floor.
At this point as he reaches towards the monolith he’s transformed into a fetus contained in a transparent sort of sphere of light floating above planet earth.
Now why did I go to all the trouble to tell you about the plot of 2001: Space Odyssey?
The answer to that is simple because it has to do with my interpretation of the movie’s plot which in my view is Stanley Kubrick’s explanation of mankind’s journey from the primitive, to the advancement, and ultimately with that advancement causing mankind’s ultimate destruction.
After the journey Kubrick goes a step further in 2001: Space Odyssey with the introduction of the fetus in a glowing sphere of light as the mark of another new beginning, possibly suggesting another cycle of advancement of mankind to come spanning over a long period of time from that very point.
Granted for that new beginning to occur the cycle of mankind started out more primitive and ultimately advanced to a point that mankind’s advancement led to his own destruction. This cycle of mankind as visualized in Kubrick’s 2001: Space Odyssey is a sort of reckoning that ended up at its terminus, or endpoint, or beginning point.
The Wrap Up
The cycle of my own journey early on in my business as I described here was a reckoning just as Kubrick’s 2001: Space Odyssey was a reckoning for all of mankind.
I believe the big takeaway here is for all of us to be introspective and to ask where our actions within our daily lives are leading us?
I ask this question both from the standpoint of us examining ourselves as individuals, but also directionally with society as a whole?
In other words, there are real big problems that are coming down the track for our society as a whole across many fronts.
For instance, we are facing another six to nine trillion dollars in national debt, we are depleting our ammunition by sending everything to Ukraine to worry more about their borders than our own. Meanwhile our border is dealing with a full-on invasion.
The banks are being nationalized, the U.S. dollar currency is tanking from out of control spending, dissidents here in the U.S. are being imprisoned, our manufacturing is controlled by the CCP, the CCP is also showing military aggression, and the threat of AI is looming.
Even Kubrick pointed out the dangers of AI with HAL turning on its human counterparts as the advancement of man led to the destruction of man in the end of the movie.
All I’m saying is that we are at a precipice with all of these things reaching a point of critical mass.
However, this is the point of this show to help all of us to realize how we must look inward at seeking the solutions to our problems by putting actions behind our daily lives to fix these problems.
By recognizing these problems we can make the individual choice within ourselves to not support the institutional things that bring about these destructive problems.
We can act and use our decision making and actions to garner more support for buycotts while simultaneously boycotting institutions that are bringing about more and more destruction to society as a whole.
This is our reckoning and the question is which terminus do we want to end up at with our society as a whole?
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