Tom's company faced liquidation, threatening 1,000 jobs and his family's home. His wife asked "and then what?" repeatedly, forcing him to map worst-case scenarios and then pivot to what came next. They landed on a vision of building and selling a new venture for $50 million.
What do you do personally to make that shift from going, holy crap, to, okay, let's figure this out, or this is what we're going to do, or holding your vision?
Imagine this. On the way out to one of my first masterminds I've ever been to in Boise, Idaho, and I was supposed to be this, you know, the biggest company that's there. And we just got called, the call from the bank that basically said, Tom, we're pulling the plug, we're liquidating, and we're just basically taking whatever we can get by selling the brands and the business, and we're just going to move on. We've just given up. I got that call as I'm going to this This great mastermind. My wife and I were running along the Boise River and I said, can we go to a very dark place? And she said, let's go there. Everyone says we're done. And she said, so what's going to happen next? I said, if they pull the line, 1,000 people in our ecosystem will lose their jobs. She said, then what? I said, we'll probably lose our house because we're personally guaranteed on the next line down, maybe our cars and everything we've saved of our ways for our whole life. She said, and then what? I said, there are other implications because the way we're structured that may happen. She said, and then what? She said, where are we living? I said, we're moving to a— we're renting an apartment. She said, and then what? I said, well, then we start our next business. She said, where are we in 5 years from now? And I said, well, 5 years from now, we'll be selling our next business for $50 million.
She said, so what are you worried about? Let's get to work.
