A Letter from Chris Suarez
WE ARE AT THE STARTING LINE
I’m just over three months away from running the New York City Marathon. This month I’ve added in some endurance runs to go along with my interval training as I prepare. An endurance run should be about two times as long as your typical run. I’ve been getting out for 10-12 miles early in the morning on Sunday to begin to build up my endurance. After all, I’m going to have to stretch that to 26.2 miles by race day. At first, I started to really feel some pain at mile 8 or 9. Then it didn’t start until mile 10 or 11. This morning it didn’t start until I hit mile 12 or 13. I’m building that endurance.
It’s given me some time to think about the benefits of building it. With so much discussion about how to double down, triple down, and quadruple down on everything we are doing to hit goals, I thought a message of endurance was more appropriate.
You see, once endurance is built, it would imply you don’t need to keep finding ways to just do more. Of course, as in marathon training, if we haven’t built endurance then it does require us to extend ourselves to create new baselines and floors.
For those that have been building their business for some time or are established in their career, it won’t take doubling or tripling anything. It will take refocusing on what matters most. But for those that are just getting started or have the hope and desire to be successful at any endeavour really, get ready for some endurance training.
Who better to look to for a lesson on endurance than the early Greeks. They were some of the greatest endurance athletes of all times. First century Greeks were the founders of most of the competitive games that we still see played today. Early Greek-English lexicons define the Greek verb for “endure” as:
“remain instead of fleeing . . . stand one’s ground, hold out.”
When used as a noun, “endurance”, the word in Greek denoted:
“the spirit which can bear things, not simply with resignation, but with blazing hope . . . It is the quality which keeps a man on his feet with his face to the wind. It is the virtue which can transmute the hardest trial into glory because beyond the pain it sees the goal.”
There is incredible headwind right now and endurance will allow us to keep our face to the wind. Again, if we are in the building & scaling phase or legacy phase of our business, then we know what we need to do. Maybe we are at mile 13 or 14. Maybe we are at mile 19 or 20. We should expect some pain. But endurance will let us get through “the hardest trial” because “beyond the pain it sees the goal”.
Business should be a lot like marathon training. We know the route, we know the destination, we have proven systems to get to the finish line. If we are convinced we have those things in our business, then show up with some endurance. There are no shortcuts. Shortcuts only disqualify you from the race. And I know, endurance hurts. We get the pain in our side. Our legs get tired. Our lungs feel like they are on fire. But those are temporary feelings that you must get through with that “spirit which can bear things…with blazing hope”. Systems will break. People will leave. Markets will change. Just like endurance training allows you to run longer and go further little by little without feeling that pain, so it is in business.
So, do you have endurance? If not, then doubling up activity is what will help you build it. Endurance is a skill, so build that skill as quickly as possible. If you have developed it already, then face the headwinds.
It’s time to “remain.” It’s time to “stand one’s ground.” It’s time to “hold out.”
