The Growing Restlessness - When Stability Starts Feeling Like a Cage

2015 likely held as many life changes as we had ever experienced in a single year. Shortly after taking a week-long vacation to celebrate our fifteen anniversary, which may have been the first full week we were away from our jobs at the same time since our honeymoon, I completed the SHRM prep course and certification then jumped immediately into the licensing process with Maxwell Leadership. I registered what I thought would be a sole proprietorship right after; if I’m being honest, I didn’t expect it to be more than a hobby and Cindy had no intention of going down that path with me. Just a few weeks prior to me accepting the Safety & HR Manager position with the commercial construction company, Cindy accepted a new role too. Like mine, her new position involved basically the same work as she had done for a year or so leading up to it but for a brand new organization; she was their very first hire.

I’ll share more about the amazing results she delivered next. Before that, I need to provide more context for all I was juggling. About a month before starting my new job, I hosted the first of what’s since become a fairly large annual public leadership development event, mainly to provide my start-up business with local visibility. I did that on a whim but began planning a similar event for the following year immediately after that initial one ended. That was the primary driver for me being so candid when I first spoke with the owner of the construction company; if he had concerns about me doing that and accepting his offer, we didn’t need to move forward. In discussing it, I assured him that I would always deliver all he needed from me and more, and my personal business would not interfere. He had no concerns, so away we went.

As I shared some of the ripple effects of scarcity, I mentioned that I learned the importance of going the extra mile very early in life. In Think and Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill calls that “The Habit of Doing More than Paid For.” That was definitely the approach I was taking as I started my business in 2015 (I wasn’t charging for most of what I was doing initially), and that’s been our goal ever since: to ALWAYS deliver far more than any client expects. I had also been very intentional about applying the same approach in every role I held in any other organization, which opened doors to more opportunities than I can count, and I practiced the same thing from the day I started with that construction company in late 2015.

I remember my long-time human resources manager’s comment in early 2012, before I moved completely into that space from safety. He cautioned me about it being heavily tied to compliance, and that I could expect quite a bit of monotony for the remainder of my career. I heard him, but I didn’t really listen well enough to take that guidance to heart. I was so busy through the final two years in manufacturing that I rarely had time to reflect on his comment. In each small company, though, I had enough bandwidth to recognize that monotony. Being one that’s never enjoyed idle time, that’s where I started involving myself in every other aspect of each business I possibly could.

Once I had my feet under with the construction company, I learned that they had been working with a consultant of sorts, specifically focused on process improvement opportunities. Having been heavily involved in that for so many years in a manufacturing environment - through 5S, Lean, Kaizen, SIx Sigma, and just about any other flavor of the month you can imagine - I was naturally interested in seeing the approach they were taking in the construction industry. That also gave me exposure to other aspects of the business, which helped me do my primary job more effectively. Had I stuck with just HR and safety, I would have grown restless in that role within a few months.

Soon after involving myself in the continuous improvement initiates, I noticed that the company had a very limited marketing presence. They had been in business for decades and had a strong reputation, but had huge opportunities to increase their visibility and market share. (I had been studying that fervently for my own business and was more than willing to share what I was learning to benefit them.)

While getting involved with each of those things helped, and that position provided me tremendous stability, I wasn’t making as much of an impact as I wanted to and that stability soon started feeling like a cage. Even after reclaiming stability after a few major career transitions, bad situations can still emerge as quiet dissatisfaction; opportunities can feel safe but limit greater impact. More on that after we look at what drove the biggest change of Cindy’s career. First, I’ll challenge you to reflect on a time when a “stable” situation began feeling restrictive. Note your immediate emotions and one early sign of misalignment.

Leaving Security for Shared Purpose

Cindy accepted a position with a company that was in the process of building their facility and brand new to our area around the same time I stepped into the HR/Safety manager role. As their very first employee, her responsibility was creating visibility, and thereby enlisting clients for that new business. And to be completely candid, she freaking killed it! So much of that was out of her comfort zone but she’s always been at least as diligent as me in living out Hill’s sixth leadership, “The habit of doing more than paid for.”

She was that organization’s only employee locally for several months and she was putting in a tremendous amount of time (and effort) to build their brand and develop the relationships necessary for when the doors would finally open. This role had a reasonable salary (for someone logging a standard workweek), but the bonuses were where she stood to see real ROI from everything she did over and above her boss’s expectations.

Since it’s her story to tell, I won’t go into the specifics. I will, however, say that the package she was hired to promote throughout our community did not align with what the clients she brought onboard were receiving. After months of fielding concerns, addressing issues with her peers on that management team, and having very direct conversations with the executive group overseeing the project, a friend pulled her aside to express concern for how it could impact her reputation. This friend understood all that Cindy was doing to remediate the issues but explained how just being associated with the train wreck that was playing out would inevitably be related to her, especially with those who only knew her through the lens of dealing with that organization.

She had been in the role for just over a year at that point and had earned more in that time than the two of us had combined just two years prior, but she was consistently working at least 80 hours per week to do it. A month or so prior, I had twisted her arm to tag along with me so she could complete the licensing process with Maxwell Leadership; they had offered a spouse discount and I couldn’t pass up a bargain. She came with me, but was very clear that it was to appease me rather than to actually engage with me in the business I started a year earlier. 

When she shared the comment our friend had made, I hit my boiling point. We had both grown very frustrated by all the issues she was working to address and receiving no support from the rest of the local management team or the executives calling the shots. I suggested she submit her resignation and move into our new business full time, her reputation was worth far more than any salary they could ever offer. 

That suggestion presented two issues. First, it meant she’d be giving up a six-figure role to join a business with barely any revenue whatsoever. We’ll come back to that… Second, she was very adamant a month earlier (when I coerced her to go with me to Orlando to work through the licensing process) that she had no interest in doing what I was doing in that business. I’ve referenced “Mastery of Details”, another one of Hill’s eleven leadership attributes here multiple times; her not being interested was a detail I wasn’t getting all that hung up on. The issue that gave cause for concern was cutting more than $100,000 from our annual household income!

We had both been living out The Habit of Doing More than Paid For and that, even through some of the greatest adversities we faced, provided us with seeds to greater opportunities than we could have imagined. As our foundation strengthened, in our careers and our personal life, we developed what Hill listed as his first leadership attribute: “Unwavering Courage,” largely based on what we had learned about ourselves and our skill sets along the way. Bold leaps often start with one partner sensing the call; supporting them requires courage and the habit of doing more than paid for. Cindy supported me when I started the business; this was where I could support her through an extremely tough decision - one where she’d likely not get paid at all for quite some time. We’ll work through some of the strain that created next. First, though, think about a time you supported someone’s challenging career transition. What blind spot in your own comfort did it expose?

Financial and Emotional Strain

In Think and Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill shared that “Unwavering courage is based upon knowledge of self, and of one’s occupation. No follower wishes to be dominated by a leader who lacks self-confidence and courage. No intelligent follower will be dominated by such a leader very long.” When Cindy left the security of her full time role, a role where she was earning more than our combined household income just a few years prior, we were leaning into every one of Hill’s leadership attributes we were capable of. It definitely required courage for her to step away from an opportunity she had worked so hard to get (and even harder in it). We had been diligent about doing more than we were paid for well before this, so that wasn’t anything new. Definiteness of Plans, Definiteness of Decisions (to walk out those plans), and Willing to Assume Full Responsibility had each become part of our core. 

While we did indeed have a solid knowledge of ourselves at that point, we most certainly did not have an equally solid understanding of the occupation - at least not as it related to the business I had started just over a year earlier. Truth be told, purpose was one driver but frustration certainly added to it. We had a lot to learn in developing our knowledge of our new occupation, and we’ve been doing that ever since. However, that wasn’t the most challenging thing that came with making such a bold leap.

Dropping the largest part of our income was definitely something we had to navigate, but we had lived on so much less for so long and had made little changes in our overall lifestyle that it wasn't a huge deal. I was still in a full time role with a reasonable salary and moderate benefits, so we weren’t concerned about another near-foreclosure experience. We were completely out of debt at that point, aside from a small mortgage payment, which eliminated a tremendous amount of pressure. Developing clarity around what services we wanted to offer, who would provide them to, and how we would develop the pricing structure were all things we had to figure out; and we’re still working through that today. The most challenging part of Cindy’s transition was the emotional strain.

Cindy had worked in healthcare for more than twenty years at that point. In that time, she developed a passion for doing everything in her power to ensure the aging population received best-in-class care. She had absolutely mastered her craft and she found great fulfillment in the results she helped the teams she was part of achieve. The last full time role she held came with more responsibility than anything she had ever done professionally. She exceeded that responsibility in every way, and her total compensation package reflected her contributions. Stepping away from all that was more than giving up a salary, it meant starting over in an uncharted arena after reaching something of a pinnacle in the field she had invested so much of her professional life in. When I made the decision to leave my manufacturing career after nearly twenty years, being repeatedly undervalued pissed me off enough that I didn’t lose much sleep over it - and I moved into a role doing very similar work, albeit in a very different industry. My career change built on what I had been doing. Cindy’s leap left the foundation she had built and put her in a completely different environment, and that put more of an emotional strain on her than I ever intended.

Over the decade-plus since, we’ve found tremendous seeds that came directly from that specific adversity, and nurturing those seeds has yielded far greater opportunities. That said, it’s never been easy. Family shifts amplify uncertainty, especially when those shifts involve giving up an income and going into business with your spouse. Make no mistake, though, that’s also been one of the biggest blessings in my life. It has, however, forced us to accept complete responsibility - jointly - for the ripple effects in order to avoid resenting one another, and that has unlocked a kind of cooperative growth that few ever experience. Before I share how that new uncertainty helped us develop even more courage, I’ll challenge you to consider the effects you’ve experienced from a family or career shift. Honestly list your contribution to the process and identify which of Hill’s leadership attributes it helped you hone.