The Day That Makes You Bulletproof

When I heard that a team of Navy SEALs had killed Osama bin Laden, I experienced a variety of emotions from exhilaration to dread about what revenge al-Qaeda might have in mind.

Then my thoughts went to the men and women of the military and intelligence community who had been tracking bin Laden down for almost 10 years. How did these people stick to their goal for almost a decade when much of the rest of the world must have seemed like it had moved on?

For most who serve, I'm sure it is the memory of a single day -- September 11, 2001 -- that gets them through the lowest points. Ten years after the fact, you still hear military men and women point to righting the wrongs of 9/11 as their primary motivation for putting their lives at risk.

Buried deep in this story, there is a lesson for fledgling business owners: You need a memory, a low point through which you persevered, to give you the confidence and determination to push through on the days when you feel like giving up.

Despite what the magazine covers would have you believe, building a successful business is hard work with many more lows than highs. Retail stores go entire days without making a sale. Restaurateurs go through all of the work to prepare their place for a meal service only to wait for customers who never come. Despite the humiliation, the owner must marshal the courage to do it all again the next day.

My day: August 29, 1993
When business gets hard and nothing is going right, I remember August 29, 1993. That was the day I finished the Ironman Canada triathlon. Now I realize that may sound trivial to some in comparison to the horror of a day like 9/11 but August 29 holds a special significance to me. I have started four companies, written two books, married, had kids, moved halfway around the world -- but it is still the memory of that long hot day in August that gets me through the worst days of company-building.

An Ironman race involves swimming 2.4 miles, cycling 112, and then running the full 26.2 miles of a marathon. The Ironman is on the bucket list of many elite athletes, but I was far from sporty growing up.

In fact, I was the fat kid in my school at five feet tall and an obese 150 pounds. I wore "husky"-sized clothing and was the punch line of many jokes.

So when I got to the starting line of an Ironman, after almost a year of training, I felt a little out of place surrounded by rail-thin athletes chatting about their "PB" (Personal Best) Marathon time. I had never run a marathon. The longest I had run in training was 22 miles and that was on its own -- not after cycling and swimming for eight straight hours.

Despite its length, the swim went fine so I felt relatively good getting on my bike. For the first 40 miles, I averaged almost 20 miles an hour with a strong tail wind propelling me forward.

At the mid-way point of the bike course, there was a 2,000-foot climb over Richter Pass, -- a long and grinding mountain crossing through the heart of the Canadian Rockies -- which I had been preparing for both mentally and physically. I got into my lowest gear and just kept pedalling, sometimes slowing to the point where I could have walked faster.

Finally, I arrived at the summit and quickly got into a tuck for the long descent down into the valley. As I flew downhill, I relished the thought that I was halfway through the bike leg; the second half would be much easier.

Or so I thought.

As I came to the bottom of the valley, I turned 180 degrees north and started to go back in the direction from which I just came. Immediately, something had changed. My legs felt like stone bricks and I was hardly moving forward. The wind that was propelling me forward for the first half of the course was now directly in front of me. And it wasn't a breeze; it was a strong gale.

I looked down at my bike's odometer -- I still had 40 miles to ride into the wind.

Suddenly I started to panic. There was no way I could ride 40 miles into a wall of wind. Then run a marathon. I kept looking down at the odometer but it seemed stuck at 40 miles to go.

Finally I decided to stop focusing on what I had left and started to focus on just pushing the cranks over one half-turn at a time. Up. Down. Up. Down. Up. Down.

Somehow, after six and a half hours in the saddle, I finally finished the bike leg.

I ran -- er, more like shuffled through -- the marathon and crossed the finish line in 12 hours, 47 minutes and 47 seconds. I remember it to the second even after almost 20 years.

Now, when everything goes wrong, I remember that headwind in the shadow of Richter Pass and everything seems smaller in comparison.

The day that made you bulletproof
My guess is that you, too, have a September 11, 2001 or an August 29^th, 1993 day in your past -- a day so full of emotion that its memory gives you the strength to keep going despite life's headwinds. Hold on to the little details in all of their agony. It is the vivid recollection of hardship overcome that will give you the strength to keep going. When things get tough in your business, remember that you have survived worse than what you are going through now.

And if your day is still ahead of you, remember that when it does finally come, surviving is all you must do to have a memory that will make you bulletproof for life.

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