November and December are considered a ‘slow period’ for many small business owners in Sonoma County and across the county. In this video blog, Ryan shares a story told by Mike Macedonio, President and Senior Partner of Asentiv a few years back at leadership training. I could tell you the moral of the story here, but then you wouldn’t need to watch the video ;)

[Transcription]

Thinking about taking time off during the holidays because everybody else is? I got a story I want to share with you.

Good morning internet fans, Ryan Parry here. And, it is a cold, crisp day in December in Northern California. Still waiting for the car to warm up. I want to share a story with you. And, why this got triggered in the first place is I was at a networking event the other day and I was talking to a gal. And, she was talking about how it slowed down during December. We’re talking about business and how she’s probably just going to take the next three weeks off or so and just wait till everybody comes back. And, I’m kind of wondering, “well if everybody everybody’s taking time off”, you know why aren’t you… this is a time you should be out there especially if you’re struggling for money.

And the story that I remembered was by my buddy Mike Macedonio who was giving a speech. And, Mike is a very athletic, fit, determined person. Him and a couple of his friends did a bike race. And, I forget the specifics about the bike race, but it’s an endurance race. And, I believe it’s a total of three people. So, it’s a three-man team endurance like 12 hours each lap is, I don’t know five miles that you have to do. And then you switch out throughout the day between the different riders. And so, the goal of this race is to do the most number of laps and beat the other teams that you’re competing against. This is on very hilly muddy – this is a mountain bike race. Hilly, muddy, you’ve got rivers you’ve got to go through. A of single-track, where it’s very narrow. and as Mike’s telling the stories, talk about how grueling it is and how exhausting it is. Towards the end of the day people are getting really tired. He’s getting tired and right at the last moment, you know you’re right at the end of the race, they had a decision to make. And, that was do they do one more lap? And, it was up to Mike. Mike, Mike was up and he goes “I think I can do one more lap”. And, when they looked at the leaderboard they were in first place and they were in first place by a lot. So, they didn’t need to do it but this is kind of how determined Mike is as an individual. So, he goes out there and he does his last lap. Not only does he make it back in time, because there is a cutoff time, but he crushes his best time throughout the whole day. So, here he is at the end of the day and he actually has his best lap of the day. And, again he’s speaking in front of an audience here and, so he asked everybody, he goes “why do you think that is?” And, the reason why is because he didn’t have any competition out there. People had already peeled off. They’re getting beers, there’re celebrating, they’re having a good time. And, because of that, there was no competition. Nobody was out there. He was actually able to go faster because he didn’t have to, he didn’t have to find areas to pass people up.

So, I want you think about your business during this holiday season or other times of the years. Where maybe you’re going to slow down because others, your competition are going to slow down also. And, is that necessarily the right thing to do?

Now, I will say it is the holiday season. This is a great time to recoup. It is a great time to spend time with family. I’m a firm believer that. I am not the guy that says you need to crush it 20 hours a day. All I’m saying is how far do you want to bring the pedal back? You know, maybe you can leave the foot on the gas pedal just a little bit and who knows what will happen for it?

Would love to know what you think about this story and about the idea of not throttling back all the way during the holiday season. Leave me a comment below would love to know. And if you’re interested go ahead and subscribe to the channel or what I think is great information. All right take care. Thanks for listening.