The Wall

Everybody hits it.

It does not matter what you are building — a business, a car, a piece of software, a pizzeria, anything. At some point, something goes wrong and the momentum you thought you had suddenly stops.

A pizza oven breaks in the middle of a rush. You lose a big account. A car project turns into something twice as complicated as expected. A software problem you thought was solved suddenly creates three more problems.

That is the wall.

I have hit it more times than I can count.

Sometimes you have to go backwards

One of the hardest things I have learned is that pushing harder is not always the answer.

Sometimes you have to stop, go back to the basics, and look at what you built from the beginning. Maybe something was missed. Maybe the approach was wrong. Maybe a piece needs to be torn apart and rebuilt correctly.

That is frustrating, especially when you already put the time in. But forcing the wrong solution usually just creates a bigger problem later.

Sometimes moving forward starts with being willing to go backwards.

Then you have to figure it out

This is the part that keeps me up at night.

How do we fix it? What are we missing? Who can help? Do we need to change direction? Do we need to start part of it over?

There have been plenty of nights where I wake up at two, three, or four in the morning thinking about exactly those questions.

And every once in a while, something simple changes your whole mindset.

Not too long ago, “Bulls on Parade” came on.

It got the blood moving and the mind stimulated. I started thinking about the build again — what we were trying to create, what the finished product could look like, and why we started in the first place.

The problem was still there.

But now I wanted another shot at it.

The wall starts to look different

Once you get moving again, the wall stops looking like the end and starts looking like something to beat.

Maybe you climb over it. Maybe you go around it. Maybe you tear a hole straight through it.

The method does not really matter.

What matters is that you keep moving.

That is one of the parts of building I have learned to appreciate the most. Not the problem itself, but the challenge of solving something that looked impossible a few hours earlier.

The wall is not the end. It is part of the build.

If you are really building something, you are going to run into problems you never expected. There is no avoiding that.

The real question is what you do when you get there.

You can quit, or you can get yourself fired up, remember what you are trying to build, and find another way forward.

Every wall you get past gives you something for the next one — experience, confidence, and perspective.

And the next time you hit one, you already know something important: