Stay Ready to Get Ready

Aicila: [00:00:00] Hi, welcome to Business as Unusual. This week I'm gonna talk about staying ready to get ready. A few years ago, I was catching up with a friend, one of those conversations where you're just trading stories, and somewhere in the middle of it,

I realized something I hadn't fully registered before. I had literally actually climbed a mountain, uh, Mount Adams, the second-highest peak in Washington State. I looked it up after our conversation, and I learned that people train for it. Some people train heavily to climb it, uh, specifically, and, and, uh, I had done it on a weekend camping trip I agreed to, mostly because my friend didn't wanna go alone.

 So here's what happened. My friend at the time asked if I'd spend the weekend with her at Mount Adams. Her husband didn't want her to go alone, and she knew I loved backpacking. I believe genuinely that the right company makes almost anything a good time, so I said yes immediately. She'd handle general prep.

I just needed to sort out my supplies and get a wilderness [00:01:00] pass. After I picked up my pass, we made jokes about needing to hit the target so we could pack out our waste because it was, um, one of those wildlife places where you had to pack out your waste, and they gave you a little target. But that's the level of preparation conversation we were having.

So we drove out there, put on our packs, started hiking, and she casually mentions that she brought a satellite phone in case there was a whiteout. I was like That can happen? It's like, huh. And I was really glad that she had planned for it. Uh, and it was, you know, easy hike.

We kept going. We... Lots of fun laughter. We hit the slow line, snow line, and I was just like, "Oh, yeah, we're camping on snow." I made jokes for years. You know, a friend of mine loves snow camping, and she'd ask me to, um, go ca- camping with her, and I'd say, "I thought you liked me." I... So, uh, I sort of have a, a policy against snow camping based entirely on disliking being cold,

but it wasn't so bad. We made a [00:02:00] fire. The crisp air was really nice. The sun setting over the side of the mountain was beautiful. And in the morning, we headed up for the peak. She had crampons and a pickaxe for the last few hundred feet of scrambling. I decided I didn't need to do that.

I, I knew what my climb had been. I, I didn't feel the need to get to the very top to feel like I'd done the experience. Um, but it wasn't until this recent conversation that I really took it in, that I had climbed a mountain. I definitely could not do it today, but at the time, I was running most mornings, lifting weights a few times a week, out in the wilderness every few weeks.

A lower level mountain climb was well within what I was capable of. I just didn't actually know that's what I was doing. And part of why I wanna talk about it, obviously also, I, I'm still kind of excited and amazed when I think about it. Um, but... And I was obviously lucky. Like, I had a very experienced person who was pl- And I, I trusted her to, to prepare for [00:03:00] things, and she did.

She, she anticipated things that I wouldn't have known, and I think that's part of having a good team. There's a lot of business metaphors that I feel come out of this, which, you know, one, yes, the right company makes everything great, and, and having a teammate you can really trust to really thoroughly anticipate the needs of the situation beyond simple things like, "Are your shoes gonna hurt?"

Like, she sort of expected me to take care of my own personal needs, but when she said she would take care of the larger needs of the situation, she did, including anticipating a whiteout, which I'm glad we didn't talk about. But I showed up with a bo- The other part of it too is I showed up with a body that could handle something I hadn't known I was gonna ask of it.

Neither of us trained specifically for mountain climbing or Mount Adams. We lived, I lived, in a way that made Mount Adams possible. And that's really what I, I wanna bring forward is Especially if you're someone who's, who waits to feel ready before you say yes to [00:04:00] something, which I see a lot of women in business and entrepreneurs in general do.

Readiness isn't necessarily a destination you arrive at. It's more a baseline that you maintain or you don't, and the gap between those two things can be invisible until an opportunity shows up and you discover mid-climb which one you've been doing So some examples of how this shows up in business when people maybe don't notice it until they're in the whiteout.

Someone reaches out about a collaboration, a contract lands that's a little bigger than anything you've done before. A speaking opportunity comes through a connection you weren't actively cultivating. And in that moment, you either feel like it's an option or you feel like it's a m- mountain you can't climb.

And it's not usually... And so, like, so I really wanna point out the distinction between opportunity and what you've been doing in the [00:05:00] ordinary week- weeks, what you've been doing in the ordinary weeks before it arrived. For example, the weekly systems check you've been doing, even when nothing urgent is pushing you to do it, will mean that your back end isn't a disaster when someone asks for a proposal on short notice.

Or maybe you've got an offer that you keep current even when you're not actively selling it. And that means you can say yes without scrambling to rebuild something from scratch, maybe just doing some small tweaks. Or those relationships you tend that don't have agendas, that you spontaneously reach out or ask for something and there's something there to draw on. None of that feels like preparation. It's not really goal or outcome oriented, and that's sort of the point, 'cause you're not training for Mount Adams.

You're just running on Tuesday mornings because it's what you do. And then when Mount Adams shows up in your inbox, you're already someone who can say yes. I wanna draw another distinction here because this, I don't want this to be perceived [00:06:00] as, and this is a trap I've fallen into, so I, I want to name it, which is it's not about being perpetually optimized.

In, in some ways it's a little bit the opposite of that. It's... And it's not about maintaining some exhausting state of readiness so that you never miss an opportunity 'cause those both just sort of swap one kind of pressure for another. It's, it's sorta, it's more ba-- like, about what your actual baseline is and really knowing it and maintaining it. Understanding what you've actually built, what you can genuinely carry, w- and what your sufficient point is.

I didn't need the crampons. I didn't need the last 200 feet of sharp rock. I knew what the climb had been. And that was enough for me. It's, it's not quite, it's not quite like quitting, right? But it's clarity, and I think that's a really important, uh, perspective to have 'cause we live in a [00:07:00] culture that often tells us to push further, take the summit, maximize, min-max, uh, e- everything, right?

And, and so choosing your stopping point deliberately and really understanding what your satisfaction is can really help, uh, minimize some of that hustle mentality that disguises itself as optimization or systems, right?

So if this lands for you and you're not actually wanting to climb a mountain, uh, pick one area of your business and ask, is this current? Um, do you know what you'd say if someone called you about this today? Uh, if you handed them this, would you actually be proud of it, or is it more 18 months old and held together with good intentions?

And if it's not, if it's more held together with good intentions, then That's j- that, you know, that's just information, right? Because it's not in demand in this moment. And maybe give [00:08:00] yourself a, a little time in the next week to, to work on it, to, to bring it up to speed. And it's, it's not really... I'm not saying try to b- the goal isn't to be ready for everything.

It's more to be moving in a way that gives you the option to say yes easily when the right thing shows up. A question I'll leave you with today is, What would you say yes to right now if you trusted that your baseline was already enough? And I'll, I'll clarify, like, I don't mean more prepared or further along, right? Just, uh, it's enough. What I've actually built right now, that's okay where I'm at.

If you hear that and feel some relief, then that's good to know, right? And if you hear that and you realize you're sort of waiting for readiness to happen, maybe you need to incorporate some of those Tuesday morning actions.

Those habits of being ready that will help you [00:09:00] to, to be in that place that When it shows up in your inbox, you don't even think about it.

Thank you for sh- to saying... Thank you for hanging out with me today. I hope this resonated with you. If it did, maybe share it with someone who's in the middle of a climb they didn't fully see coming. And if you haven't yet, take the energy snapshot at bicurean.com/energysnapshot.

It's a good place to start understanding what kind of energy you're actually working with. Unusual.

Thank you for tuning into business as unusual, remember, in this ever evolving world of modern business, it's not about fitting in.

It's about standing out. See you next time. Stay curious, stay innovative, and always keep it unusual.