You wake, you work, you live life. But the entrepreneurial journey also includes a certain special rush. And, if you know anything about the “entrepreneurial mindset” you know that this is something we love.
Each day when I arrive at “work” I’m challenged to meet our next goal, keep pushing, keep growing. The excitement, the challenge, the constant movement and the beautiful feedback from our peers and members — it’s the fuel that feeds the entrepreneurial spirit.
The first half of 2018 has been a high-fuel adventure for my Zest co-founder and me.
Over these past several months we’ve achieved many milestones, some major and some minor. We have pushed ahead from one achievement to another, always with our eyes fixed on the next summit.
- We launched an additional delivery method for our members to access Zest’s content Stream.
- We started a seed funding round
- We grew our Zest team with a few more members and said goodbye to another whom we really loved
And, we added new features, tested new business models, clarified our core values, and more.
But what we didn’t do was stop to take a breath. We didn’t pause to evaluate just what we had achieved. Each milestone was treated as just another agenda item. Check the box, mark it done, next!
Because when you are in a sustainable growth mode there is always a next mountain to be climbed. There is always a next thing to do, a next problem to be solved, a next task that requires your attention.
Which is why, a few weeks ago a friend of ours gave my co-founder and me a figurative (and nearly literal) slap in the face and said “Are you guys nuts? You do not understand what you’ve achieved?!?!? You have worked on these goals for three consecutive months and you’re talking about building your strategy forward without even absorbing your achievement?”
And she was right. Because we had been so busy putting one foot in front of the other, we had never stopped to look back over the terrain we had covered. We hadn’t taken the time to review where we’d been.
Maybe you are thinking, “So what? Onward and upward, why look back?”
Not quite.
Actually, NO!
Reflecting on the past is essential to improving upon the future. More than one famous person has said words to the effect that you can’t know where you are going if you don’t know where you’ve been. Or, as Design for the Mind author Victor Yocco explains in his article for Smashing Magazine, Dwelling on the Past: The Importance of Self Reflection (Part 2):
“We won’t grow from our experiences if we don’t understand them and make changes based on what we’ve learned.” (Yocco also recommends using an amazing model called the Reflective Cycle created by Graham Gibbs that walks you through the entire process.)
Besides, even though we entrepreneurs may thrive under the pressure of continual action, research tells us that consciously stopping to take in the moment can lead to breakthroughs in creativity. Mindfulness, in particular, “facilitates what creative experts refer to as the incubation and insights stage of the creative process,” write Ellen Keithline Byrne and Tojo Thatchenkery in the Harvard Business Review article, How to Use Mindfulness to Increase Your Team’s Creativity.
Get the point? Taking a moment to reflect isn’t a waste of time. It’s the key to your business’s future!
So, we decided it was time to put the rush on pause and take a moment to review our work, refresh our minds, and consider our past as we prepared for our next step.
We took some time to stop and touch the desert.
Idan and I made a decision on a Wednesday that we would wake at dawn the next day, pack our laptops and keyboards, our notes, and some essential supplies (Breezers, snacks, and a portable soap bubble machine — you know, just the important stuff) and head to a small, isolated farm in the desert of South Israel for the weekend.
When Idan and I decided to embark on our trip to the desert, we knew that we wanted to celebrate Zest’s achievements — but, not like you celebrate a victory. I see a victory as an external celebration with trumpets, pats on the back, hugs and the whole shebang. And, the word victory has a military-war connotation — to have conquered.
When we celebrate our achievements as if we have conquered a foe, it changes the way we look at those achievements. We look at them in one dimension, as a win instead of a loss. This point of view can keep us from seeing both the gains and losses of that achievement. It can keep us from seeing what we need to do better next time, what new directions we need to take, and how we can move forward to our next achievement.
For this trip, we wanted something deeper than a victory celebration. We wanted to connect with one another as founders and to connect Zest’s past with its future. Our trip was the perfect time and place to do this.
Here’s what we discovered while we rested and reflected under the desert sky.
First, the desert at night is beautiful. On the first night we hiked to the top of a rocky hill. Moonlight transformed the terrain around us into a surreal white landscape. We look out at the desert and said farewell to the past. We acknowledge our appreciation for what the past two years had given us and taught us, then we said “ciao and gracia para todo.”
We knew that we had been changed.
This is what it means. This is why they call it the startup journey. Because you will move forward. You will be changed by each step along the way.
And, then we fired up the bubble machine.
On the second day, Idan and I hunkered down in our room. The desert is hot! We had everything we needed, food, drinks, good company and a sense of calm. We talked strategy, remembered all we had been through, laughed at ourselves a little. Then we wrote out Zest’s values. We set goals, and talked about our changing roles in the company we had built. We thought about where we might see ourselves in a year as our Zesteam grows.
That second night, serendipity! We discovered that it was not only Tu B’Av (a Jewish holiday celebrating love) but also the night of a rare Blood Moon eclipse. Our desert retreat was the perfect viewing location for this magical event. Positive vibes all around!
Soon, though, it was time to come home. Driving along the dusty road, unplugged from our laptops and messages, we summed up our weekend — the purpose and clarity we had found. And, of course, being entrepreneurs, we began making plans to climb that next mountain.
American poet Maya Angelou once said, “I have great respect for the past. If you don’t know where you have come from, you don’t know where you are going. I have respect for the past, but I am a person of the moment. I’m here, and I do my best to be completely centered at then place I am at, the I go forward to the next place.”
Our weekend centered us. We were able to examine our past achievements, bring closure to that chapter of our lives, and leave energized to face the future.
I have never felt so clear on where I have come from or where I have been. I now understand how the past two years has shaped Zest and what we must do to continue moving forward.
Our time in the desert has left Idan and me empowered, completed, and more lemonized than ever before. And, now, onward! Bring on the rush.
