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Steve Jaffe
In southeastern Utah is an area so sublime, epic and imagined, it literally forced me to tears when I saw it, experienced it, had the pleasure of journeying through it.
Looking back, the trip taught me many things - about myself, my life, my aspirations.
And more recently I see how that epic experience engendered a profound teaching about business. I want to share that teaching with you here, as it is profoundly important to your business also.
I have been a journeyer. In my early 20s I led outdoor trips professionally to places like Yosemite National Park, Rocky Mountain National Park. I have spent up to 30 days at a stretch backpacking, climbing, fishing, hiking. Reflecting with groups of up to 13 people.
On a close friend’s recommendation, years ago, I set about to explore Utah’s Escalante canyonlands on a rare solo trip. A 2 day drive from California where I lived at the time, I spent 5 days hiking into a canyon called Coyote Gulch. Here’s what I saw:
In the canyon I found myself inside a diamond, a jewel, a rare space special for millennia. Three hundred foot high canyon walls enveloped a narrow expanse of dirt and sand so pristine, even the dirt seemed clean. What startled me most was the colors. The canyon walls glinted with red and pink and white flecked stone, in luminescent, vibrant tones. I vaguely felt held inside a painting of epic significance.
The days were long, warm, the air clean and wholesome. It took days to acquaint to the quietness. Mostly I remember the river and the ambient energy it possessed.
When I started the journey into this canyon, I had no idea quite what to expect.
Out the outset were puddles. Small, regular, well formed. Notable – the only water I perceived for miles in this Utah desert canyonland. As I stepped past the puddles I felt something emerging, something vague on the corners of thought, sensed something opening, stretching, becoming.
As my journey into the canyon progressed the first day, the puddles became more frequent, every few feet or so. Then I noticed one puddle trickled into another, and another, and soon the puddles subsided and gave forth a sustained onward trickle. Narrow, maybe three inches wide, but constant. A tiny flow.
A few hours into the canyon I stopped and set down my heavy pack which carried my tent and food and camp stove and sleeping bag and the sundry necessities of wilderness camping. Wide white and pink walls towered overhead, bleeding to a transient bright blue sky.
At a bend in the canyon I heard the sounds of a cascade. From a crack in the canyon wall a green plant grew, teeming with color and energy, and sustained by water seeping through fissures in the rock, feeding the plant its vital life, with the sun. Set against the harsh sweeping rock the plant seemed incongruous – a mini oasis set on a vertical wall.
Standing next to the plant, the sensation of life was palpable. I felt like I was standing near a waterfall, only rarer, more special. More significant as water can be scarce in Escalante.
Somehow, water lay behind the seemingly dry walls of the Canyon.
As I continued further into the canyon, the trickle I had perceived grew. Widening over time, it became a flow a foot wide with a continuous directional flow farther into the canyon. Somehow, the trickle was growing.
The Waters of Coyote Gulch, Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, Utah, USAFive hours into the journey, the trickle was three feet wide. Audible murmuring, the stream serenaded my meandering.
By the second day, the stream was ten feet wide at stretches. The occasional vegetation emerging from the rock delighted in daylight grandeur.
On the third day of my journey, about twelve miles into the canyon, the now-fifteen foot wide Coyoye Creek merged with the grand Escalante River, at a point where the Escalante River was fifty feet wide at a stretch.
Crossing the Escalante River here, I had to unbuckle the straps on my pack. Were I to take a fall, the pack might have drowned me if I weren’t able to let it go. It took vast concentration practiced through years in the backcountry to cross the river comfortably.
In that canyon I experienced and saw many things. A natural rock arch crossed over the river, a site that nearer the road would have attracted thousands of visitors per year to see the rare site.
My map noted curious markings at one point. Following a faint path toward the canyon wall, I came onto colored markings on the rock. Pictographs drawn by ancient inhabitants of the region, the Native Americans before we called this place America.
The colors of the rock and the epic sky live on in my mind – surreal, grand, almost ostentatiously beautiful and serene.
But mostly I remember the river. How it started as puddles. Became a feint trickle. Grew by degrees to a stream and then a river and then merged with a river powerful, mighty, ancient.
It started me to see how quickly the puddles had become a mighty raging river in only 10 miles.
Know this: Everything starts with a trickle, including your business. Your early steps will create small happenings. Puddles.
You create a few videos or post a few articles and generate a few leads.
You post an enlightening comment to Twitter, and two people Tweet back.
You publish some comments to a forum. A handful of people respond thanking you for the insight.
The trickles will grow.
You start generating a lead here and there. Two leads a week.
Shortly it’s five leads a week, one lead a day.
Puddles.
Then it’s a few leads a day. Now you have 20 leads.
What startled me was the puddles, how they grew into a river.
Get excited about your puddles. Celebrate the trickles.
Just as the grand Escalante River grew from trickles, so too will your business.
Just as potent life emerged from barren rock in the presence of water, so too will business spring forth from your trickles.
The plants in Escalante do not pout about the amount of water they receive. They do not lie dejected and sullen. They embrace the little water they receive, and spring forth teeming from it.
So too must you celebrate your trickles. When you start to generate a few leads, shine this success to your list.
Publish it to a forum.
Tell your friends.
Glow, emanate, reveal.
Your trickles will grow. They too will become a constant, one foot wide stream as you generate a small handful of leads each day.
Soon you will have a three foot wide stream. Onward and onward as your experience and efforts compound, your stream will grow.
Contributing to your flow, others will help. New business partners will join your business, new tributaries joining your stream.
Like Coyote Creek meeting the mighty Escalante River, your business can become mighty, flowing onward, supported by powerful players who educate and support you.
Business partners who join your business and produce, produce, produce, gush forth business that contributes to your own.
Celebrate the puddles. Aggrandize the trickles.
When you make small gains, get the word out.
Do not judge yourself harshly. Remember, to those starving for water in the desert, your trickle might sustain them.
Do not compare yourself to those earning tens of thousands of dollars per month. To the person out of work who needs a home based business, that you’ve chosen a home based business is powerful.
Do not compare yourself to those generating hundreds of leads per month. To the person who’s never generated a lead, that you’re learning to generate leads is impressive.
Never underestimate the importance of your seemingly small trickles.
The favorable email you receive from a reader who appreciated your autoresponder email.
The forum reply to a comment you made that inspired someone.
Celebrate your tiny successes, and they will cascade.
You must be open to accepting success to attract more of it. Gratitude pulses your ability to receive. Have gratitude for your small successes, and they will compound.
When I reflect back on Escalante, I mostly remember the river.
From the seemingly dry recesses of your life, your mind, your heart, your life, success is burbling. Open to its effusive flow.
Somewhere, around the next sweeping bend in the river, or the one beyond that, a wide mighty river is flowing.
Follow the stream, follow the flow, and sing your success loudly.
A mighty river beckons.
Go meet it.
