As many of us get up every day and feel like we are standing at the crossroads of our dreams and our realities, I want to talk about something that touches all our lives as entrepreneurs: resilience in the face of challenges and the art of embracing our own unique journeys.

Every one of us here has faced a challenge or two where things didn’t go as planned. Maybe a revenue target was out of reach, or perhaps the competition was so challenging that it tested our adaptability. Maybe we’ve experienced job loss, or our personal lives dealt blows like divorce or worse. In these moments, it’s natural to feel discouraged or defeated, and you feel overwhelmed to the point of quitting. But it is precisely in these moments that our true strength as business leaders is forged.

It’s also at times like this that each of us in this room needs to know that we’re not in this alone. I am here to help each of you succeed, and, likewise, I have learned from, and been inspired by, many of you. 

As President Ronald Reagan said in 1975, “The greatest leaders are not necessarily the ones who do the greatest things. They are the ones that inspire others to do great things.” 

It’s about learning from each failure, whether it’s yours or the person sitting next to you, or across the room from you. It’s about more than just avoiding that same mistake in the future – but to pave a path that leads to greater successes for yourself and for your partners in this room.

Resilience is not about avoiding challenges, nor is it about powering through them with blind optimism. It’s about facing them head-on, armed with the wisdom that each setback is not a dead end or even a stop sign, but a guidepost to a new route we hadn’t considered before.

Now, embracing our journey might seem like a lofty concept when we’re in the trenches, dealing with the day-to-day demands of running a business. But consider this: every major breakthrough in history, every great company that has stood the test of time, started with someone who dared to journey into the unknown – someone who simply asked, “What if?” They embraced not just the destination, but the road itself, with all its potholes and detours.

Angela Duckworth, the psychologist who wrote “Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance,” tells us that “Grit is sticking with your future, day in, day out, not just for the week, not just for the month, but for years, and working really hard to make that future a reality.” Embracing the journey means acknowledging that the path to success is rarely a straight line. It’s a mosaic of experiences that range from exhilarating wins to educational losses. When we start to view our professional lives through this lens, each day becomes an opportunity to contribute a unique piece to our business mosaic and to those around us.

So, as we move forward, let’s not shy away from challenges. Let’s approach them as opportunities to demonstrate our resilience, to innovate, and to grow. Let’s share our journeys with each other, learn from our collective experiences, and build a community that thrives on support and mutual success.

In a 1:1 I had with Josh this week, he talked about the concept that every relationship has a value exchange. That can be transactional, as in I hire you, pay you money, and you deliver a service, or that can be relational, where we share ideas about business or life in general, and we learn from each other’s knowledge and experiences. For these relationships to flourish, the value exchange should be balanced. 

When you became a member of Pikes Peak Pros, you might have been thinking this was a great way to grow your own business, in other words, what can I get out of this relationship? If that’s why you joined, I hope you walk out of here with the understanding that you actually became a partner with the rest of us as we all struggle to make our dreams our realities. 

Remember, it’s often just after the toughest climb that the view is the most spectacular. Let’s continue to inspire, educate, and help one another; let’s embrace our journeys, not as a series of obstacles, but as the adventure of a lifetime where we build our own unique mosaics and add to each other’s.

And as always, be encouraged!