Morning friend.
I’ve just spent fifteen minutes in a sauna trying to relax by willing the sand in a timer to fall faster.
It’s one of the few places where my mind goes somewhere else at the moment. Generally towards the question of how much longer I can tolerate being inside the sauna.
Before that, I managed a twenty minute workout. There isn’t much room for perfect sessions just now, so I’m taking what I can get. Good enough can become great when done consistently.
About an hour ago, I signed the lease and franchise agreement for our second Jiu Jitsu academy.
And spent almost the same amount as I did on my first house on deposits and legal bills.
The commitment is made.
By the time this lands in your inbox, we’ll have collected the keys eleven minutes earlier.
Now I’m sitting here considering what I’ve just agreed to.
Six years ago, during lockdown, I set out to create somewhere people could come together through Jiu Jitsu. Somewhere to share a bit of adversity and make friends along the way.
Today, more than 630 people train with us every week.
I’m proud of that. I’m also conscious that there are people elsewhere in Leeds who could benefit from the same thing, if we brought it closer to them.
That’s what we intend to do in Garforth.
It means taking on more debt and accepting pressure that I could have chosen to leave alone. It means asking more of our team, and becoming better at leading them.
I also want to build a more substantial business. One that provides a good living for the people working in it and, over time, more security and opportunities for us all.
Of course, the route towards opportunity involves putting some of what we already have at risk.
Which is an awkward arrangement to deal with.
Bizarrely it got me thinking about bees.
I used to keep them, back when I had time for things like keeping bees. Then I started a business and became rather more occupied with my own expanding colony.
I'll spare you the lecture on apiculture as we could be still here until next Sunday. Here's something to think over.
Honeybee colonies reproduce by swarming. The old queen leaves with a large number of workers (her daughters), while a new queen develops in the colony they leave behind.
For a while, the 20,000 or so departing bees may be clustered on a branch, exposed, while scouts search for a suitable home. I used to enjoy the challenge of balancing on a set of ladders with only a veil and some courage for protection.
Swarming bees can be surprisingly placid. It used to amaze my anxious neighbours that I could collect them at all.
They have left an established nest without yet having another. That was the part I kept thinking about after signing today.
I’m stretching the comparison if I suggest that signing a commercial lease makes me a queen bee. Although I imagine my team could have some fun with that.
But the uncertainty feels familiar.
We can work through the figures and prepare carefully. We have six years of experience to draw upon, and people who understand what we’re trying to build.
None of that guarantees the new academy will work.
So how do you decide that something is worth risking what you already have?
I don’t think wanting it badly is enough.
Especially when other people will carry some of the consequences of your decision.
And after what I wrote to you last week about making room for life, I can hardly pretend that adding another business to my responsibilities will somehow create more hours in the day.
It will require clearer responsibilities and better systems. Some of the ways we’ve worked until now will need to change. I have to be willing to do that work too, rather than simply being enthusiastic about the opportunity.
What makes this worth attempting is knowing what has already happened in our first academy, and believing we can create something equally worthwhile elsewhere.
In the next few years, I want more than a thousand people across Leeds to have our community in their lives and to be a part of something bigger than themselves.
That feels like a risk worth taking to me.
But the reality of any risk is that I can see a reason to accept it but I can’t see the outcome.
There are no guarantees.
And that's never an easy decision to make.
Perhaps you’re considering risking something with that same uncomfortable truth.
You have a life that works well enough. Something you value and would hate to damage.
Alongside it is a niggling possibility you keep returning to that steals your quieter moments most days.
The reason we find it difficult to act on those possibilities is that we can usually describe what we might lose much more clearly than what we might gain.
What you have is real. The other thing hasn’t happened yet.
You don’t owe every possibility a yes. But if the same one keeps returning, it probably deserves a deliberate decision either way.
I can watch the sand fall in the sauna and know exactly when my fifteen minutes will be up.
It will take rather longer to find out what this afternoon’s signatures were actually worth.
Before we go any further, let’s take a moment to debrief together:
What would make the risk you’re considering worth taking, even though it might not work?
Your mission this week (if you choose to accept it):
Take one decision you’ve been circling and write down what you hope to gain alongside what you could realistically lose.
Look at both honestly. Decide whether you’re willing to accept the loss.
If you decide the cost is too high. That is a decision too.
The only poor decision in life is to not make a decision at all.
I’ve made mine.
Time to swarm.
That’s enough for now.
More next Sunday.
Mike
Hold the Line · Do the Hard Things
