Go Slow To Go Fast.

In the words of Leo Tolstoy, the two most powerful warriors are patience and time. Too many entrepreneurs and business owners do not leverage patience or time and yet they want to be considered warriors. Today, we're going to slow it all down. I'm Howard Mann and this is the Business Brickyard Podcast. Today I want to tell you a bit about my experience with running.

You see, I never thought that I had any aerobic capacity at all. I had worked out with weights in the past, but had become convinced that I had smaller lungs or some other lie I told myself long enough so I believed it as the truth. Two years ago, I decided to follow my own fuck your pride advice and start running. Not for any particular race or distance goal, just for myself. An attempt to overwrite that old story in my head.

At first, the goal was simply to run one mile. That may seem simple enough but was not so easy for me. I'm happy to say that I can now run a five ks with relative ease and a 10 ks is in my sights. What I want to share with you is how my initial approach to running was all wrong. For the first six months, I pushed myself to run as hard and fast as possible.

Each time I finished gasping for air and with legs that were wrecked for days. But grinding as hard as you can and going as quickly as you can is what it's all about, right? No pain no gain and all of that other chest bumping bullshit. But about nine months ago I stumbled upon a great book called Finding Ultra by one of my favorite podcasters Rich Roll. While this very well written book is about a lot more than running, Mr.

Roll takes up running after a long battle with alcoholism and a health scare where he felt chest pains and broke into a cold sweat from simply walking up the stairs in his home. His goal, at first, was just to get healthy for his family and life. But as he progresses, he decides he wants to set out for a more audacious goal and sets his sights on not a simple marathon, but a race called the Ultraman. The Ultraman entails swimming 6.2 miles, cycling 260 miles, and running 52.4 miles over three consecutive days. To accomplish this, Rich, yes I'm calling him by his first name in the small hope that he will hear this and instantly wanna hang out, searches for a coach to help him prepare to finish this extreme race in just a few months.

When he reached out to ultra endurance coach Chris Houth, Rich was already running 20 miles at a time in the hills and mountains near his California home. So what his new coach told him he needed to do caught him by complete surprise. His adamant advice was this: You need to slow down if you want to go fast. It turns out that the old idea of running with your heart rate chugging along at your aerobic capacity (typically two twenty minuteus your age or around 170 beats per minute for me) just burns out your muscles and is not nearly as efficient in building the long term aerobic foundation that can carry you to ever longer distances. For those of you that are interested, this increasingly popular approach is called heart zone training.

In particular, zone two training which is MUCH slower than you were probably used to, at first. For me, zone two training meant staying in a 140 beats per minute range. I can go as fast as possible as long as I keep my heart rate in that zone. This zone allows me to enjoy my runs and go for much longer distances. At first, it felt more like a shuffle than a run, and sometimes slowed to even a walk.

But fairly quickly, I was going faster and faster while keeping my heart rate in this lower zone. More importantly, I was able to run daily without the soreness and fatigue that had made running so difficult for me to sustain in the past. My distances quickly increased. By slowing down, I had built a foundation and a lasting capacity to go faster and farther. By going slower, by having patience, by taking my time.

In case you have not picked up on it yet, this episode is entirely about business. In fact, it may be about you and your business. Go slow to go fast. Stop with the hustle and grind bullshit. Slow down and spend the time on the things that will allow you to finally create a foundation to support a future of incredible speed and capacity in your business.

Go slow to go fast. Who are you racing against? Do they matter? If you read my book, then you know how I feel about chasing your competitors. Go slow to go fast.

When you make business decisions quickly, they are usually made from a place of emotion instead of allowing the time to be more logical, strategic, and thoughtful about the longer term implications of your choices. Go slow to go fast. Just as I talked about in episode seven when I urged you to play the long game and create a thirty six month year, most businesses are stuck racing for incremental gains. They do not take the time to think bigger or take even more time to build up the capacity that is required to realize the type of growth they actually crave. If every year you were just racing to hit your numbers and hope the next year will be a bit better, then you were just a one mile runner trying to do the same thing a bit faster.

That may be impressive, but business is a long game and you need to figure out how to play it that way. You know that saying, it's a marathon and not a sprint? It makes us feel good to say it. But how often do we actually live it? Go slow to go fast.

As a quick postscript or bonus tip, Another connection to running a business for me is what has happened to my creativity and my ability to solve tough business challenges while I am running. After the first fifteen minutes or so, something meditative happens as a result of chugging along at a speed where you are not gasping for air or in constant pain. In fact, I created most of this episode in my head during my run. I have solved some very tough challenges for my clients in miles two, three, and four. Unlike meditation, where the goal is to not dwell on thoughts, running has provided me great uninterrupted thinking time.

If you have struggled with calming your mind or are wrestling with an intractable problem, be a worrier and take some time for a long, slow, and patient run. Thanks for listening. Until next time, take it slow. Hey there. Just a few quick notes before you get back to work.

My goal is to make this podcast as useful as it can be for entrepreneurs who are not fulfilled by the businesses that they own. Your feedback, questions, and comments are not just welcome, they're encouraged. So please feel free to email me at h@howardMann.com. Also, be sure to jump over to howard Mann dot com and join my mailing list. When you do, you will get a PDF of my book, Your Business Brickyard, for free and will be first in line when I launch new coaching groups and special events.

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