Shawn Ellis describes hitting a financial wall in 2017 as a divorced single father rebuilding his business. His grandfather, a farmer, taught him that after planting seeds you do your part and then let go, trusting the outcome. Ellis realized sustainable success meant relaxing and trusting the process, not grinding himself to exhaustion.
Chapters
So the year 2017, so I'm 9 years into the 10-year journey. So you would think that, okay, 9 years into the journey, it ends with how grateful I am just because, well, so 9 years in, it must be getting really good, right? Like it must be, must be almost at the finish line. But I remember very well, 9 years in, being in the kitchen of my 2-bedroom apartment where I was living with my son, divorced at that point, a single parent, still trying to rebuild the business after the Great Recession years before. And I'm staring at this financial cliff up ahead and thinking, "This doesn't look good." Talk about how like you've been taking the steps and not seeing the results. I remember thinking like, "I shouldn't be here." And I remember saying to myself, "I'm scared." I was honestly scared. It was the first time I said that out loud. You know, as leaders, we say things like, "I'm stressed. I'm frustrated. I'm angry," whatever. But we don't say, "I'm scared." But I said, "I'm scared." And I had myself a little pity party, then I worked my way up the energy ladder. But then I remembered something that I learned from my grandpa that I didn't understand the power of it in the moment, but I remember— I told you I lived 3 miles down a dirt road. A mile further down the dirt road was my grandparents, and they were semi-retired farmers, but my grandparents, they still had about 300 acres and cows and crops. And I remember going in the field with my grandpa when it was time, when it was planting season, And after the day in the field of being on the tractor and planting corn or soybeans or whatever it was, I remember we'd park the tractor in the garage or in the shed, walk back across the road, and I remember him saying, "Well, I've done my part, and now it's up to the good man up above." And whether that's your worldview, whether it's the good man up above, the woman, the source, the spirit, whatever your worldview is, just nature, what we can all agree on is that once you plant the seeds in the soil, it's out of your control. They're in the dark. There's nothing we can do at that point. We can tend to the soil, yes, but the seed is going to do its thing. And that's the thing, the seed will do its thing. If you plant corn, corn is what's going to grow. So what I realized in that moment that summer, not in that moment, but as I worked through that process and figured, okay, well, how do I keep going? I remember that the real key is just to relax, let go, and trust, because I can't control what's happening around me. All I can do is keep doing what I'm doing, and I can either fight and hustle and grind and be exhausted, or I can relax, let go, and trust.
