Business is like a man rowing a boat upstream. He has no choice; he must go ahead or he will go back. "Lewis E Pierson"

As we attempt to move our careers and ideas forward it is important to understand our focus must always be on moving forward. The idea of the row boat is perfect as it is easy to understand how hard we must work to row a boat. Rowing a boat is hard for me even in a calm lake. The idea of rowing a boat upstream seems impossible.

As a leader your boat is probably filled with those who are relying on you to get upstream. This puts even more pressure on you not to float backwards to where you have already been. Business is like rowing upstream each and every day. Rarely does it get easy and if you are going downstream you are going where others have been before. Success does never comes from floating a boat where others have already been.

The excitement is in the daily row for those of us called serial entrepreneurs, or as I call them rock pushers. Our survival in rowing upstream involves learning how to create momentum in rowing the boat. Momentum will allow us to rhythmically create power and speed as we push our business upstream. Without a focused effort to create momentum it is virtually impossible to row the boat upstream day after day to your destination.

Others are required to help row the boat, but it is your vision to insure that the boat is always moving forward, falling back makes it more difficult to move back upstream. Rhythm and momentum, are the only way I know make this task achievable.

Today, I am a very weary from rowing the boat. This happened several years ago when and I was in an early stage project working on my own. When I quit rowing, nothing good happened and the project stalled and lost momentum. That is why birthing a company or idea is so hard if you are doing it alone, you have no one to pick up this slack of the daily row of the boat.

I encourage you to find a person or team of people who want to embark on the adventure with you. You will need a time to rest from the row and without others you cannot continue to move upstream. This time I have a great team around me that will continue to make progress while I catch my breath and get ready to row harder.

The Chief Rock Pusher