Every Era Has Its Own Glaciers

I recently took my family to Denali National Park in Alaska.

There are certain places that make you stop thinking about business for a minute.

Denali is one of them.

Standing there with my family, surrounded by mountains, glaciers, and a landscape that makes you realize how small you really are, I found myself thinking less about where I was going next and more about how far I had already come.

I'm in my early 30s now.

I'm incredibly blessed.

I get to travel the world. I get to take my family to places I once only saw in pictures. I get to build companies, pursue ideas, meet incredible people and experience a life that, during some of the harder years, I couldn't fully see yet.

I don't say that to impress anybody.

I say it because somebody reading this might currently be living through the years that don't make sense yet.

This is for you.

Every Era Has Its Own Glaciers

Looking at the glaciers around Alaska, I kept thinking about how much can be created slowly.

Not everything impressive happens quickly.

Layer upon layer.

Season after season.

Pressure.

Time.

Movement that can be almost impossible to see day to day.

And eventually, something massive exists.

Business can feel exactly like that.

Every era of your career will have its own glaciers.

In your early years, it might be money.

You're trying to make payroll, land clients, build credit, establish a reputation and figure out what you're actually good at.

Then you solve some of those problems.

Congratulations.

You get new ones.

Now it's employees.

Leadership.

Taxes.

Larger contracts.

Larger risks.

Attorneys.

Systems.

Protecting what you've built.

Learning when to say no.

Figuring out which opportunities are actually opportunities.

The problems don't necessarily disappear as you become successful.

The problems become worthy of the person you've become.

That's a perspective I wish somebody had given me earlier.

Don't Judge Your First Chapter From Someone Else's Middle

Early in your career, it's incredibly easy to believe you're behind.

You see somebody with the company.

The house.

The office.

The vacations.

The clients.

The freedom.

What you don't see is what happened ten years earlier.

You didn't see the nights they couldn't sleep.

You didn't see the deal that almost destroyed them.

You didn't see the account balance.

You didn't see the rejection.

You didn't see the years when nobody knew their name.

You didn't see the mistakes they paid dearly to learn from.

Social media has made it incredibly easy to compare somebody else's harvest to your planting season.

Don't do that to yourself.

If you're 22, 25, 28 or 35 and things aren't happening as quickly as you imagined, that doesn't mean you're losing.

The more important question is:

Are you building correctly?

Because speed without structure eventually sends you backward.

Build the Business Before You Build the Lifestyle

This is probably one of the most important things I could tell a young entrepreneur.

Don't spend your first successful year trying to look successful.

Use it to become difficult to kill.

Build reserves.

Fix your credit.

Pay your taxes.

Learn your numbers.

Document your processes.

Hire carefully.

Protect your reputation.

Develop multiple ways to acquire customers.

Learn contracts.

Get good advisors.

Invest back into the company.

Build relationships before you need favors.

And perhaps most importantly, keep your personal lifestyle from growing faster than your business.

There's nothing wrong with enjoying success.

I certainly do.

But there's a huge difference between enjoying what you've built and spending money trying to convince people you've built something.

Build the foundation first.

The lifestyle will come.

And when it does, you'll enjoy it differently because you won't constantly be afraid of losing it.

The Goal Was Never to Work Forever

This is something Denali reminded me of.

I love business.

I love marketing.

I love creating.

I enjoy winning.

I still have enormous goals.

But standing there with my family, I wasn't thinking about my next invoice.

I wasn't checking whether somebody responded to an email.

I wasn't thinking about who had the nicest office.

I was looking at my family in one of the most beautiful places in the world.

And I thought:

This is part of why we build.

Not just revenue.

Not just recognition.

Not just another zero.

Freedom.

The freedom to go.

The freedom to stay.

The freedom to experience things with people you love.

The freedom to be present.

The freedom to make a business decision because it's the right decision—not because you're desperate for the money.

That last one is underrated.

Financial success isn't only about what you can buy.

It's about what you're no longer forced to tolerate.

That's a completely different kind of wealth.

Your Hard Years Are Buying Something

If you're currently in the difficult part, understand what you're purchasing.

That Saturday you're working when everybody else is out?

It can be purchasing future flexibility.

That money you're reinvesting instead of spending?

It can be purchasing stability.

That difficult lesson from a bad client?

It can be purchasing judgment.

That employee situation you handled poorly?

It can be purchasing leadership—if you're willing to learn from it.

That deal you lost?

It can be purchasing discernment.

Pain isn't automatically productive.

You have to extract the lesson from it.

But if you do, some of the hardest periods of your career can become incredibly valuable tuition.

Don't waste the tuition by refusing to learn the lesson.

Success Should Eventually Give Something Back

This is where I think entrepreneurship sometimes gets unhealthy.

We're taught to keep moving the finish line.

Hit $1 million.

Now chase $5 million.

Hit $5 million.

Now chase $10 million.

Open another location.

Hire another person.

Launch another company.

There will always be another mountain.

Denali makes that pretty obvious.

But if you're never allowed to enjoy the view because you're obsessed with finding the next mountain, what exactly are you building?

I'm enjoying my 30s.

I'm enjoying my family.

I'm enjoying traveling.

I'm enjoying the opportunities God has blessed me with.

I'm still hungry.

I'm still building.

I'm nowhere close to finished.

But I've learned that gratitude and ambition can occupy the same room.

You don't have to become less ambitious to appreciate your life.

In fact, I think gratitude makes ambition healthier.

You stop building because you're trying to prove something.

You start building because you've been given something worth stewarding.

One Day, You'll Understand Why You Kept Going

Maybe you're reading this from an office you don't want to be in.

Maybe your business isn't making what you thought it would.

Maybe you're wondering whether you chose the wrong career.

Maybe you're watching people around you move faster.

Keep building.

But build intelligently.

Don't just work harder.

Become better.

Learn finance.

Learn sales.

Learn leadership.

Learn how to communicate.

Learn how to negotiate.

Learn how to hire.

Learn how to lose without becoming bitter.

Learn how to win without becoming arrogant.

Learn how to protect your time.

And learn when enough is enough for the day so you can go home and actually enjoy the people you're supposedly doing all of this for.

Because one day, if you build it right, you may find yourself somewhere you once dreamed about going.

Maybe it'll be Alaska.

Maybe somewhere completely different.

And you'll look over at the people you love and realize something:

The difficult years weren't your life getting in the way of success.

They were part of becoming capable of carrying it.

Don't Rush the Glacier

Some things take time.

Let them.

Build layer by layer.

Year by year.

Client by client.

Lesson by lesson.

Become financially stronger.

Become emotionally steadier.

Become harder to impress and easier to satisfy.

Build a company that doesn't own you.

Build a life you don't constantly need a vacation from.

And when your season finally changes, enjoy it.

Don't feel guilty because things are good now.

Don't manufacture another struggle because struggle became familiar.

Take your family somewhere beautiful.

Put the phone down.

Look around.

Thank God.

You've spent enough time climbing.

You're allowed to enjoy the view too.

Standing in Denali with my family, that might have been the biggest lesson of all.

Every era has its own glaciers.

Some you're still climbing.

Some are quietly shaping you.

And some, eventually, you get to stand at the top of and finally understand why the journey was worth it.

Writing from Denali National Park, Alaska.

— Corey Flores
Founder, Flores Marketing Firm