There were no rental cars left.
My brother Kyle and I flew out for a wedding in Colorado, went to grab our car, and there was nothing. Sold out. So we got on Turo and took the only thing available, which turned out to be a Slingshot -- basically a roofless go-kart. Then we drove it about four hours into the mountains.
No roof, no windshield, no real plan. Just the two of us, a borrowed go-kart, and a lot of wind. Like a lot. It was stupid and kind of uncomfortable and one of the better drives I've had in a while.
I've told this story before and laughed about it plenty of times since. But it stuck with me more than I expected, and I think it's because of the sideways part. The trip we planned would've been fine, but the one we got is the one I'll remember.
Things go sideways, and that’s the part you actually remember.
When the plan falls through
Every business I've worked in runs into the sold-out-rental-counter moment. The launch slips or the new hire doesn't work out. The thing you were so sure of turns out to be dead wrong. It happens, and the whole game is what you do in the next five minutes -- reach for the keys and drive, or stand at the counter.
I'm not naturally good at this.
My instinct is to freak out. But what's changed over the years is that I've got a little more practice driving the proverbial go-kart, and I've watched enough detours transform into the good parts to trust it a bit more each time.
Why the boring reps matter
I've been in the gym a lot lately. Nothing dramatic, just showing up most days and picking up something heavy and putting it down. It's the least interesting hour of my day. But I think the reps you put in when nothing's happening are what you draw on when everything comes to a head.
That's true of a gym, and it's true of a business. The teams that handle a crisis well aren't lucky. They did the boring work -- wrote things down, built the systems, tracked what mattered -- back when nothing was on fire. So when the car rental comes up empty, they had something to reach for.
Half the people I work with live in this world too, funny enough. Founders building something special, coaches who spend a decade getting good at a thing, leaders getting their IP down on paper.
People who trust that the reps add up even when the day doesn't feel like progress.
One thing to sit with this week
Think about the last thing that went sideways on you, and how you took it. The calm to enjoy a detour usually isn't about the detour. It's those reps from earlier, in the boring stretch when nothing was going wrong.
So put in the boring reps. They're what let you enjoy the sideways parts when they show up.
Shane
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