The Unnamed Storm
I want to start off with something. And that is this. If this email means nothing to you, if it seems to be answering a question you never asked, just skip it. Don’t bother with it at all.
There are certain things in small business, that can be understood from the outside, even when you’re not involved in anything business related. But there are a lot of things that can’t be understood until you’ve gone a certain distance along the business road.
And so it is with the topic of today: the Unnamed Storm.
Just the other day, a chap was explaining to me over a zoom call, how he’d just come out of a three month ‘funk’ in not just business.
But in life altogether.
His mood had been off.
He wasn’t himself around family.
He was training heavy (too heavy, he suggested?), but it wasn't fun.
He asked if I’d had such a thing before?
I shared with him a particularly dark period - that I haven’t shared with too many before - which was in my last year or so of owning our gym in Melbourne. Although, those circumstances had nothing to do with it, probably. Because the strange part of this harrowing period, is nothing was technically ‘wrong.’
I was married to my beautiful wife.
Our business was going well.
I was training and generally pretty healthy.
But for one stinking-hot Melbourne Summer in particular, it’s like each day was shrouded in a sheet of black haze that completely blocked the sun. I was impatient (even more than normal), and my mood was through the floor…
Even when good things would happen!
Eventually, it seeped into our marriage, and things got pretty dire.
And my productivity in my work was diabolical at times.
Now most people that I’ve met, at least in small business circles, have experienced something like this before. Inexplicable darkness, apathy, and disinterest in the world around them.
I’ve spoken to countless business owners who have gotten so far into this…
That they often want to walk away from their business altogether, thinking it's the root of the problem.
While my views on it have shifted a lot now and are much more religious in nature - which I won’t go into here both due to lack of credentials in that arena, and lack of time - at the time, there's seemingly no cause for these times.
They are like an Unnamed Storm.
They sit off the coast, and hammer you with their gale force winds. And you’re not sure why, for how long.
You have little motivation, and, even less clarity.
Regular ‘tools’ and ‘strategies’ seem to be futile in the face of the winds.
I dare say this is probably not too helpful so far. The only thing I can offer - without diving into the spiritual side of it - is that these storms seem to come before periods of change. A big learning, a levelling up…
Or even…
An outright shift in your identity!
And you may not see it at the time (my experience is you rarely do), but around the corner, if you can break out of it, there’s a different identity, or person that you’re becoming. Which is coupled with a slightly different assignment in business, or in life.
Which was certainly the case for me.
It's almost as if the Unnamed Storm strikes some of us when we’re not living in alignment with who we really are, and what we’re really here to do.
Which isn’t to say it’s always a matter of changing a business or moving.
In many cases, it’s simply meant stepping into something with more authority. Or casting off something that I’ve been holding on to.
Anyway, if you’re getting hit by the Unnamed Storm right now...
And things are hard for you, or you don’t know what’s next for your business...
Stay the course.
Business is hard.
And have faith.
Faith is infinitely more important than clarity, which is always so fleeting, and it can help you listen for cues on where to go next.
It might take time, but you will come out the other side, and see what needs to be done.