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Hi Reader,

"You have too many books..."

Literally minutes after my high school best friend sat down in our living room over the weekend, he proceeded to point at the multiple bookshelves and our (admittedly large) stack of books against the wall, and inferred we had a problem.

Maybe he's right... But also, maybe that's our secret sauce...?

Over the last week, we've sat on 4+ hours of market research calls asking the amazing people in our community questions to shape & validate the next offer we're cooking on already. And one of the most frequently repeated things we heard was "we love how many books you guys read".

We didn't build our collection of books overnight, but over time, we've curated a deep bench of business & self-help books that we refer back to when we're coaching & having conversations.

Recently, I sent this reel by Eric Dodds to Joelle because it did a great job of breaking down what he called The Bamboo Principle. Simply defined, people think of bamboo as a rapidly growing plant that can grow 90 feet in a couple of weeks (aka overnight success). What most people miss is that the root structure for bamboo spends years growing & preparing underground unseen before it ever breaks the surface.

If we think about the strategies, frameworks, & reframes we use with our coaching clients, those didn't all pop up this year.

We've been reading books, experimenting with our business, even getting both my masters degrees in business (in my case), and we finally knew enough this year that we fully committed our business to coaching.

Something that we have to come back to frequently is that in many seasons it feels like nothing is happening or things are going painfully slow - that's normal, it's when you're growing roots and preparing for your "overnight success".

Growing roots doesn't mean doing nothing though; it's still active, it's still working towards a goal, it just looks different.

But I'm type A and I need to know how I can grow roots better...

A couple of weeks ago, my brother sent me this article about how GM is using VR to test their entire manufacturing process virtually and catch problems before spending millions of dollars on assembly lines that would have to be changed if the problems were only caught after they were built.

Fun fact, my first job out of college was at the same company as my brother, which makes assembly lines for manufacturing, but that's a story for another day.

When car companies launch a new car to the public, they've been working on it for years, sometimes upwards of a decade internally, before the public ever sees it. Because the car has to be designed, each subpart has to have a manufacturing process created for it, and then final assembly (where the car is put together) has to be figured out.

This is a massive undertaking, which is just like bamboo spending years underground before the shoot sees the light of day.

Why I bring up GM is that they're using VR (a new tool) to make the process faster (catching problems before the machines are built), and cheaper (way fewer physical prototypes have to be made).

As business owners, we can also use tools to speed up our "growing roots" periods.

• Have a north star you're working towards - even if it changes, you have a lens through which your subconscious is building on "autopilot"
• Networking or just spending time with people who do what you do means you can learn from their experiences, not just your own
• Build a daily learning habit - my favorite is to read at least 1 page per day, because most people will read more once they start, but everyone can commit to just 1 page
• Ask follow-up questions, if something is interesting or helpful for you, almost anybody will give you an extra moment if you ask a question you're genuinely interested in
• Iterate little things frequently - if you have a new idea, experiment with it (once a week? month?), just about everything can be rolled back if it doesn't work, but if you don't try new things, you'll never learn if there's something better
• 20% time - for a long time, Google’s had the policy that every employee at the company should spend 20% of their time on things outside of their day-to-day responsibilities on things they were interested in or passionate about (major projects that came out of 20% time include Gmail, Google News, & AdSense)
• Find a mentor or coach who can point out your blind spots and guide you in the direction to grow & improve much quicker

If you're in a growing season, know you're not alone. We all go through them, and it gets better. Especially if you're willing to ask for help.

See you next week,

Lyndon

Ps, if you can see details on our coaching offer here if you're looking for support in this season