Episode Transcript

What’s up, everybody? Welcome back to THE a.m guys. So I want to talk about vision today, and I want to go down the path of this.

Most people struggle with seeing long term and seeing the big picture. And the reason why is simply we have not letting go of control of the how. And this is what I mean by that. When Andrew and I first started business, and we’re drafting out the vision of this and that this and that it was very apparent in a lot of our conversations of, how is that going to happen? How are we going to do that? And honestly, it doesn’t matter. The how doesn’t matter, right?

Like, let me give you an example of this, okay? And I’m not saying that the details, the execution of things, do not matter along the way. But if you don’t start off with a basic vision that is very broad and expansive. You’re never going to go in the direction of where you want to go in life. An example of it is this, I want to go to eat Chick fil A, all right, it’s like five minutes from my house, but I have to start with that broad vision of I want to go eat Chick fil A, and then I get in the car. Now, all the details of where the sun’s going to be positioned, how fast the wind is blowing the clouds that are running across the sky, or the sky is cloudless in the day, whether it’s fall, winter, summer, spring time, how the trees are going to look all the different leaves, if it’s fall time that are still on the tree versus on the ground, like you think about the 1000s of details.

And I live in Georgia, we were mostly wooded areas where we are, and especially in North Georgia, okay? And so you think about the 1000s of leaves that I want to pass on the ground, on the trees, those are all details along the way, along the journey that I’m going to take in as I drive. And what happens is our technical well, how many leaves are going to be on the tree? When should they fall this, that? And we start getting stuck on, hey, I want to build a company, and I want to build an app that changes lives. We get stuck on, well, what about this? And then, do you know code C++ Java, and we start getting stuck on all these things versus no, let’s actually drill down and see if it’s a worthy cause. Let’s drill down and actually see if this is worthwhile work, and if this is a worthwhile vision to even even go forward. And let’s have that discussion first before we’re going to be able to break it down into, well, what, what is it actually going to look like, how we’re going to do this, how we’re going to do that.

And if you struggle, if you struggle with having long term vision. If you struggle with having big picture vision, I would encourage you just to go through exercises of one day I am just going to have this, or one day I am going to do this, and it’s just something you do like a bucket list. Just treat it like a bucket list. You don’t need to plan out how you’re going to do it. You don’t need to think about how it’s going to come to pass is like, this is what I want to do, write it on a sheet of paper, and then think about it. And then what will happen along the way is, oh, that’s the direction I’m going. And then you’ll start getting in the car, and then, hey, I want to go to Chick fil A, and then you make the decision, do it. I’m going to do this. And then all the pieces are going to fall into the place.

Here’s the crazy thing about the vision, all the pieces that you need to accomplish and do the work that is in front of you, they’re already there, but they are not going to fall into place without the vision. They’re not going to fall into place without you actually agreeing. Like the road for me to get the Chick fil A is already there. The scenery and all the things I’m going to pass are already there. The paint, the double yellow line, the white line, is already there for me, right? So if you think about that, it’s like, oh, it’s already there. All this stuff for you to do, what you want to do, and how you want to have purpose, and how you want to grow and how you want to really contribute. It’s already there, but you’re never going to experience it if you don’t start in that broad place first, the details will come.

And this is how I lead a lot of the team. I start with high level stuff, and then I go, Cool, let’s break this down into medium chunks. Hey guys, here’s our medium chunks, here’s this, here’s this, here’s this, here’s this. Cool. How are we going to do this? And then we’ll talk, Hey, how are we going to do it? And more often than not, all the capability, all the pieces and all the things that we need to accomplish, whatever it is we’re able to accomplish that, and we already have it in hand.

It’s just putting it in the order that we need, in order to accomplish what we need to accomplish, most of us get stuck on vision, like, Well, how do I break my goals down? Because we overcomplicate everything. Write the goal down. Okay, awesome. Write what you want to accomplish down. That’s step one. Just do that and look at it and be like, cool. And then you can think, practically, well, how would I really do this? And it’s that simple, it becomes very practical and easy to break down from large, medium to small.

Anyways, guys, I’ll catch you later. Peace.