Just landed back from a week in Miami. Agency Hackers conference, then a few days in the Florida Keys with my laptop and not much of a plan. Writing this slightly jet lagged, which after years of travelling I've learned is best treated with a short run rather than a lie-in. Landed, dropped the bags, got out for twenty minutes. Works every time.
Nine weeks to Jakarta. Five weeks until Bali. Let's go.
As you grow, the pool of people who've done what you're doing gets smaller. So you have to find them.
Something happens as a business gets bigger. The number of people who genuinely understand what you're dealing with shrinks. Most agency founders never get past ten people. Very few get past thirty. Almost none do it across multiple markets.
That's not a complaint. It's just the reality of why I make a deliberate effort to find the people who have gone further than I have. Not because I don't back myself, I do, but because there are people out there who know exactly what the next stage looks like. They've already navigated exponential growth and how that impacts culture, or figured out how to build a leadership team that doesn't need them in every room. That knowledge exists. It's just not always easy to find.
Agency Hackers puts those people in the same building for two days. The format is open. People talk honestly about the hard stuff - cash flow, exits, what it cost them to scale, what they'd do differently. No ego in the room, just operators at different stages comparing notes.
I came out with ideas and solutions to problems I didn’t even know we had. Not because I didn't know what I was doing going in. Because the people ahead of you have already made the mistakes you haven't made yet, and most of them are willing to tell you about it if you just ask.
I made a promise to myself years ago, to never let my ego get in the way of our growth. The moment you do that is the moment your competition has a chance to catch up.
“The people ahead of you have already made the mistakes you haven’t yet made. Most of them will tell you about it if you just ask.”
Training while travelling. The goal changes.
A week in Miami during a HYROX build is not ideal. But it's also just reality. I run a business that involves travel. I have a race in nine weeks. Those two things have to coexist.
The thing I've worked out about training while travelling is that the goal changes. At home the goal is progression. On the road the goal is maintenance. Showing up, doing something, keeping the habit alive. A session that would feel like underperforming at home is a win when you're in a different time zone with a conference schedule to navigate.
The jetlag piece: I used to try to sleep through it. Push through the first day, hibernate, hope I'd feel normal by day two. Doesn't work. What actually works is getting outside and moving within a few hours of landing. Doesn't have to be much. Twenty minutes at a slow pace. It resets everything. The light, the movement, getting the body into the new time zone physically rather than just waiting for it to catch up mentally.
Nine weeks to Jakarta.
“The training doesn’t stop because the location changes. You just recalibrate what a good week looks like.”
The desk is where I execute. It’s not where I think.
I spent a few days in the Florida Keys after the conference. Deliberately unstructured. Laptop open but no fixed agenda. And it was the most creative I've felt in a while.
This keeps happening and I’m no longer surprised by it. The best thinking I do is never at my desk. It’s on a run, in the sauna, when driving or sat by the pool. The desk is for executing the ideas. The ideas themselves need space to arrive.
I don't think most people give themselves enough of that. Not because they're lazy, because working looks like sitting at a desk. But some of the most productive things I've done for my businesses have happened when I was technically doing nothing.
That's issue three.
Going to take my own advice and step away from the desk for a bit.