In Transformative Leadership, the #1 Best Seller book on Amazon, Daniel Brian Cobb's chapter "Be the Water that Drips Through Stone" offers a refreshing antidote to the paralyzing emotion of fear. If you’re seeking inspiration to overcome challenges and embrace persistence in your business journey, this chapter is a must-read. Here is an excerpt:
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Chapter 24
Be the Water that Drips Through Stone
Save Your Business with the Power of Persistence
By Daniel Brian Cobb
“It’s better to be constant than clever.”
— Matt Bunk
Your fear will destroy your business. Fear can be paralyzing, seeping into every corner of your life, and it can be especially destructive in business. More than any other factor, fear will take your eyes off your goal and put you on a path to self-destruction. If your anxiety doesn’t hurt the people around you at work, it will impact your family or your health.
My journey is a testament to the power of conquering fear by choosing to ignore what cannot be controlled.
I’ve been accused of being an optimist. I confess I’m guilty as charged, but my optimism isn’t a misguided emotion I was born with. I wake up every day facing the same fears common to all entrepreneurs. My optimism is a learned technique. It’s a choice based on training and experience, and it’s powered by persistence. The core of this transformative leadership strategy is built on the power of trust.
Even Water Drips Through Stone.
New ideas. New innovations. New solutions. No distractions.
Being a creative person, I love making new things. But not every problem can be solved with creativity. My life taught me it's better to be consistent than clever. Over time, even water drips through stone. This is a pattern I’ve seen in business. In fact, I’m obsessed with the patterns that emerge from observation. I observe patterns so I don’t suffer or cause suffering to others.
How do creative people find the balance between innovation and consistency? A well-conceived goal shouldn’t be negotiable, but the path to the goal should remain flexible. Rigid pioneers find themselves pushing through mountains rather than climbing them. However, don’t be so flexible that you create change for the sake of change. That just wears people out.
My superpower? I trusted the value of hard work.
If trusting in hard work was my superpower, what was my kryptonite? I’ve often found myself reverting back to behaviors that bring safety to the business rather than pushing forward toward the business goal. If I lose trust in my team, I sometimes turn back to my old role and often do their job for them. Worse yet, I get extremely prescriptive, telling people exactly what to do and how to do it.
I know this is happening when I get that look in the eye from my team members that says, “You are doing my job again.” I may blame it on my desire to be creative, but deep inside myself, I’m afraid. My fear of loss of another client drives me to take over. If I do it all myself, I know I can get the job done to the satisfaction of the clients. I can prevent us all from another layoff. Or can I?
If I let go, I allow my team to fail. They learn more by failing than by my incessant teaching of the way. Most likely, their failure won’t destroy the business, but giving up on them or getting distracted from the goal surely will.
When I fear failure, I become the workaholic husband/father who spends his nights sleepless on the couch with red eyes glazed over by hours of computer time. I might be present in body but not in spirit. The stress takes me away from my workout time and prayer time. This is how high-performance executives lose their marriages and their families.
When I stop to pay attention to the lessons I’ve learned, I come to a place of rest. When I meditate on good things, I can see it all clearly. I must be the water that drips through stone. This is how successful businesses thrive. Successful families are the same. Patience and persistence can build trust, so the crazy cycle of the rat race does not take over.
To keep it all simple, success starts with this equation:
Focused Pressure + Time = Breakthrough
Keep your new ideas focused on old goals. Fight the temptation to focus on threats or new shiny objects that can distract you or your cause. Don’t give up on your goals or your values to “save” your business.
Be the water that drips through stone. Over thousands of years, water has proven to erode even the most immense monuments of granite or limestone. From the Sphinx of Giza to the rocks of Yosemite, limestone and granite have been sculpted by persistent water flow. When faced with conflict, adversity, or temporary failure, water does not give up or go back to where it came from.
What’s your thousand-year business plan?
It’s often stated that 80% of new businesses fail in the first year. I argue that 100% of new businesses fail in the first year. It’s the 20% who proceed past failure that change the world. Failure shouldn't take us by surprise, as it’s simply part of the process. I’ve started countless businesses, and for every one of them, I have had at least one good reason for quitting every year. The only difference between the failed businesses and the successful ones is the fact that we didn’t quit. Time is your friend.
In Japan, some family businesses have thousand-year business plans. This concept can be incredibly foreign in the land of fast-food entrepreneurs. The quality of Japanese cars came as a shock to the Detroit automotive machine, where the automotive industry was first invented. In the U.S., we pride ourselves on having better ideas, but generational business thinkers outperformed us. Since those failures in Motown, we updated our mental models, and our cars improved as well.
There is a proverb that reads, “In all work, there is profit.” It takes a certain faith or life experience to believe this is true. Sometimes, our efforts seem to yield little to no results. But time can be a great teacher. In a way, failure is an even better teacher.
A good idea can be useful, but unless it's backed by effort and time, that idea will almost always fail. With enough effort and time, even a mediocre idea can succeed. Likewise, consistency rules over genius. In fact, consistency is genius in the making. Like Nelson Mandela said, “I never lose. I either win or learn.”
Learning is a superpower. We all build mental models for quick decision-making. Similar to that of a great athlete who acquires muscle memory, experience builds response times much faster than any human processing can understand. This proficiency by way of building mental models happens in business and even personal relationships.
When we dedicate time and attention to a singular effort, our brain adapts to the environment we subject it to survive in. Our minds naturally build “muscle memory” to avoid complex processing of lessons previously learned. This is the essence of wisdom.
The Tool
Rough Waters Make Shiny Rocks
As I sit on the beach in Northern Michigan, I’m enjoying the results of hard work. I notice how the powerful currents and rough waters of Lake Michigan have polished the stones into something quite beautiful. Resting in finely ground sand, these colorful and polished stones symbolize the end result of the powerful forces that often push against us all. I have come to believe the struggle of hard work is a good thing. It polishes perspective, humility, and, most of all, gratefulness.
The tool you can use for building trust is gratefulness.
Rather than constantly looking around for something better, be grateful for the people around you and begin to trust them to perform in their superpower. Don’t expect them to perform in their kryptonite. That’s why they need you.
Gratefulness lives life to the fullest with no regrets. The only thing I would take, back if I could, is the time I wasted worrying about things that never happened. What am I most grateful for? The people I chose to do life with, despite their shortcomings and failures along the way. These are the same amazing humans who stuck with me despite my shortcomings and failures.
That is how we’ve won so often—together. That is our “drip.”
If you have problems, don’t turn your focus on them; your drip will get off course, and the problems will only get bigger. First, solve the problems of others, and ultimately yours will be solved. When you find your tribe, make your covenant there. Be grateful, have grace, and trust the process.
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