Scaling Starts With a Mountaintop View…

Last week I arrived home from an incredible few days in Breckenridge, Colorado. I have had just under a week to process the trip and there is so much to unpack (in more ways than one!)

Let me first tell you that as a leader it can be lonely at the top and that is partly why I made the trip. My wife has been a tremendous support along the way but I needed some fresh input!

One of our clients connected me to a WhatsApp group of men in the USA who wanted to be better husbands, fathers and sons, as well as better business leaders. Like me, they were men of faith, sharing the same passion and purpose.

I spent some time last year with the founder of this group in Loomis, California, as I had just missed out on the first Breckenridge gathering. Those 10 days revived my vision of doing business in the USA and spending time with Michael, Linda and their seven sons helped me focus on building more purposefully.

Fast forward a year and I was headed to Breckenridge to meet with the group in person. I loved the fact that they talked about vision rather than other people behind their backs. Their positivity made a stark contrast to the gloomy rhetoric in the news and on my social media feed.

Were these men on drugs? No! They were filled with hope (not dope) and they believed that we could make a difference together. Their Christianity wasn’t a crutch, it was a lifestyle.

So, I bought my plane ticket, and then a very generous man in the group put two of us up in his studio apartment in the ski resort of Breckenridge. Five days in another country, on a mountain, with time to be encouraged, inspired and refuelled!

On arrival, I realised that despite their obvious success, the men’s chief shared characteristic was their humility. It wasn’t an ego contest, they wanted to empower one another.

Building generationally

Bob and Lauren, whose beautiful and spacious mountainside house hosted our meetings, have four children and twelve grandchildren. Bob had exited one company enabling him to start another and then, an idea in a tough time saw him exit for a telephone number-sized fee.

Too many times we hear of people compromising the very thing they were working for in the first place (their family), and over the five days we learned that you can have both success and a happy family (which I had always suspected).

Building generationally is a principle that transforms cities and nations:

To go up you need to get out, so put some time aside!

Going out alone gives you a fresh perspective. With no demands on me day to day, no demands on my role as head of our branding agency, I was able to simply listen and learn from the wise!

Travelling is all part of it and, up above the clouds, I start thinking big. Why is it that being in a pressurised tube hurling through time you feel the pressure lifting as you refocus on future possibilities?

I knew my resources were depleted and I needed time to reconnect with the bigger picture – for me, it’s really important to build in some time on the mountain! But this time, not on my own, I needed some time out with like-hearted people.

Men need to talk, family, friends and focus:

Women love to talk and men don’t. This is a stereotype that needs to be broken because men do talk. It’s just harder for them to trust each other. Why? Because society demands that we have all the answers and, until that changes, men will suffer silently.

Thankfully, I have never been through the pain of the devastating effects of suicide, (I did once rescue someone close), and I know that what keeps us from that place is being able to talk.

I used to enjoy playing team sports and I noticed that what brought us closer together as teams was sharing life along the way. The team bond was born out of sharing our losses (both on and off the pitch) while plotting our wins in both arenas.

Men do talk, but they need to find their tribe. It needs to be an environment that is free of judgment and here you’ll find that manhood isn’t toxic, it’s the skeletal strength of society. Our prisons are full of fatherless sons and daughters, who grew up without good men as role models!

Family, friends and focus are all things that men feel responsible for. By sharing our challenges in these areas we gain greater clarity, grow in courage and help each other overcome through collaboration.

Enjoying wins and celebrating with others:

Too often along the way, unresolved challenges put my life on pause until I fix them. This in turn never happens because entrepreneurship demands a constant solving of things!

Whilst away I made a decision that I’m not going to apologise for success. Building our branding agency has cost us so much that the rewards that come with it shouldn’t be hidden from view.

While I haven’t looked for permission to celebrate I have minimised success and feel uncomfortable around awards. Yet, if someone can’t see it, how will they know that that too can win?

No more holding back, we are on the attack for good!

Building is hard, building with pioneers is easier:

Building alone is hard and raising leaders alone is harder still. Having more experienced leaders around you helps. They see the pitfalls and encourage you even when you are less than perfect.

Pioneers are a strange breed, they are risk-takers, journey-makers, tough talkers and experienced professionals who love working with people because they never forget where they come from. Ready to teach and able to share.

Thankfully, this tribe is just that, pioneers who make progress!

There is gold in the older generation, learn to mine it:

You may have heard Mark Twain’s quote,

“When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.”

Many of today’s leaders buy into the narrative that their generation is getting it right and they are coming to fix what the previous one broke.

The truth is if we do not learn from history we will repeat it, so learning from the older generation is a part of learning to flourish.

One of my mountain friends, Greg Gunn, gave me some insights into our family dynamic that has already made a difference in the way we interact. Armed with his insights, we can identify negative family cycles, break them and become better at operating Team Irwin!

The US adventure is here.

The US has always been my dream, and I am more convinced than ever that this journey is part of a generational story!

On the last day of our trip, we were allowed to take Lauren’s jeep to the mountains. What struck me most up there was the evidence of all the goldmines. What kind of pioneering spirit must have been needed to operate in such inhospitable conditions?

I think that the American Dream got to me that day and I’m looking forward to 2025 as a year when we are going to thrive and at the same time establish our footprint stateside. I have never been more excited about the team we have around us in our branding agency as they too want to build generationally. They have the Spirit of the Brave.