Your professional life will always reward you for proactively choosing to be uncomfortable. I’ve experienced this first-hand more times than I can count – and I’ve decided after 40 years, I’m going to stop learning this lesson the hard way and instead embrace it as a rule for life.
When I locked myself in a room at 6:30 every morning and completed 100+ cold calls before coming up for air, it was uncomfortable. 3 years later, I found myself with a customer base that generated $20M in recurring revenue and was the envy of my peers. Uncomfortable paid off.
When I started a business and two days later was served a nefarious lawsuit to prevent me from gaining momentum in a market where I had a lot of relationships and opportunity – that was uncomfortable. Defending myself with patience eventually cleared that issue and I was able to build and scale a successful business. Uncomfortable paid off.
And for a more practical example – when I wake up and choose to exercise, sweat, stretch and pound a jar of bitter green juice, it’s uncomfortable. But on those days, I gain physical energy and mental focus that enable me to get more accomplished before 10am than many do in a full workday. Uncomfortable pays off.
"Uncomfortable is not a choice, but how we experience it is."
I came across this statement earlier this year and it perfectly captures the essence of this topic. It reminds us to embrace hard things and that when we choose to bring uncomfortable to the now (rather than always trying to avoid it), we can influence where, when and how we experience it.
It's also teaches that choosing uncomfortable has the impact of eliminating or greatly reducing surprise discomforts down the road. All of this makes me more confident than ever that uncomfortable will continue to pay off.
Ventured Highlight
Now for a classic case of "getting uncomfortable now" so we can "be really glad we did" later. Through our venture Measured Capital, we are days away from finalizing an agreement to acquire $16M+ in commercial real estate.
As excited as I am to have found this unique opportunity and as confident as I am in the underlying fundamentals and strategy – it would be inauthentic to say that there isn’t a touch of uncomfortable here. It's a big transaction with a number of variables and unique stakeholders out of my control.
But if we don’t get uncomfortable, then we’ll never do a deal and someone else will come and win the opportunity. If we don’t get uncomfortable, we can’t benefit from the historical shift to becoming a “renter nation" and owning apartments to service that need. If we don’t get uncomfortable, our investors won’t have the chance to experience the perpetual wealth generation that this asset will provide. It's for all of those reasons and more that we continue to choose uncomfortable.
The investment is now closed for equity partners, but you can sign up for our investor portal to get market updates and learn about future deals before they fund.
Worth The Click
1. How To Get Out Of Bed: "I am rising to do the work of a human being. What do I have to complain about, if I’m going to do what I was born for—the things I was brought into the world to do?"
2. Why Your Constant Busyness May Just Be Laziness: "Being busy is most often used as a guise for avoiding critically important but uncomfortable actions."
3. Pain: "It’s funny because many of the toughest people shrink from facing these issues. They forget to stay with it, to push through, to do what they need to do in spite of it."
I hope you found this note useful or at least allowed you to pause and be intentional for a moment. And remember – we always get more of whatever we focus on!
Best,
Dan Reilly