In this solo spoken‑word episode, the host introduces the "pushing a rope" metaphor to illustrate a common early‑stage founder mistake: trying to force outcomes that are fundamentally hard to achieve, especially by hiring too many people too quickly and onboarding them without a clear process. He recounts a recent client who, in an effort to "buy back his time," made a massive hiring push within a 30‑60 day window, leading to chaotic, ad‑hoc training, high per‑head costs, and constant firefighting. The founder’s lack of documented procedures meant the new team had nothing to follow, turning the organization into a fire‑fighting operation rather than a strategic one. The host then describes how he helped the client "slow down to speed up" by lining up decisions one at a time, mapping a clear game plan from the current state (Point A) to the desired state (Point B), and documenting that plan so the team could pull the rope together. He concludes with a practical thinking‑time prompt for listeners: periodically ask yourself where you might be "pushing a rope" in your business—what feels hard, what frustrations you face, and what fires you keep putting out—to shift from futile force to coordinated pull.
Chapters
Hey everyone. Well, have you ever tried pushing a rope? It's not really the easiest thing to do, even if you have one of those big battle ropes that you can find at a gym and you try to push it. It's not really the thing that you would do. It's much easier to pull a rope. Well, I found myself— I don't know the very first place that I've heard this, but I found myself using that as somewhat of a metaphor with business owners whenever it seems like that they're trying to force something to happen in their business that just feels hard to do, or it feels like this is a big gamble. This is a big gamble. This could pay off, but if it doesn't pay off, this could waste a lot of time. A lot of money and just overall a tremendous amount of resources that it oftentimes can feel like it has to be a home run. Look, business is hard enough as it is. And so doing it in hard mode doesn't really make a lot of sense. Just like trying to push a rope across a gym floor doesn't make a lot of sense either. I think the other thing is, is the worst part is business owners often don't even realize that they're actually trying to push a rope in their business. And so let me give you an example. There's a business owner that I've worked with over the past couple years or so, and in the middle part of last year, about a year— well, about a year ago or so, we had kind of taken a pause because he had kind of went all in with what he was working on regarding his team. And specifically what I mean by this is he was trying to push a rope by making some really big hires in the organization. Now, this stemmed from this idea that he was trying to buy back his time. Now, he wasn't necessarily using that language, but that's effectively what he was trying to do. He's trying to get himself out of a lot of roles in the organization. All at once. And this business is in its early, uh, early stages, so within the first 3 years or so. And doing all of that in a 30 to 60 day period of time puts a tremendous amount of pressure on you as the business owner, and that really kind of everything, every decision you make really kind of feels like it has to go perfectly or could it end up being a very costly mistake. And unfortunately, that's what That's what happened. It wasn't just the volume of the number of people that were trying to be onboarded, and at that point it had to all be trained and onboarded by one person, and that was him. But again, it wasn't just the volume, it was also just the per-person total loaded cost was very high. So it was a definite pushing the chips in on the table, going kind of all in. You hear that often, but it wasn't as much thought through that way. If there's a time, obviously, when you're playing poker— and I don't want to mix too many analogies here— that sure, you're going all in because you feel like that you have the hand to be able to do that. That's not the case here. He was trying to push a rope. Onboarding was clunky. It was sporadic. Nothing was being followed because there was nothing to follow. Shooting from the hip, running around like a chicken with his head cut off. What fire is burning brightest? Being a great firefighter, but simply a better arsonist. Training wasn't really conducted, and if it was, it was made up on the fly. The team wasn't following anything. The new team members wasn't following anything because it wasn't, wasn't anything to follow. I mean, I think you can see where this is going. He was trying to push a rope instead of trying to pull a rope. Now fast forward 6 months or so. Things got in a really tough spot. But over the following 6 months, I helped him to be able to slow down to speed up. We lined up the decisions one at a time. We actually built a game plan. We looked at where is— where are things today? Where is it we're trying to go? Point A. Point B, what exactly is our game plan? Is it documented? Can— is it something that we're on the exact same page with? That's pulling a rope, not pushing a rope. And so as a specific action item for you to be able to use to help you to know, like, is there sometimes maybe I feel like I'm actually trying to push rope in my business? Well, the next time you sit down in your cozy thinking chair at home or your favorite coffee shop, give this, uh, question or prompt a shot during that thinking time session. Where am I trying to push a rope in my business? What feels hard right now? What am I frustrated about in the business? What fires do I feel like I need to continually put out. I think if you can give yourself just one time, maybe once or twice a year, as a thinking time exercise to, to kind of step back away and to ask yourself those questions— where do I feel like I'm pushing a rope in my business?— I think it can help you to be able to see it from a different perspective so that you can stop trying to push the rope and actually go about pulling the rope in your business. Hope this was helpful to you. Until next episode, lead well and go be great.
