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They don't leave dramatically, they just become unavailable. They're too busy for the difficult projects. They're overwhelmed when you need them the most. They're dealing with personal stuff every time excellence demands some type of sacrifice. And we're not judging them. That's not what this is about. This is about recognizing that you don't win with summer soldiers. From Others Over Self®, It's Hardcore and At Ease. A show about people who are keeping their edge without going over the edge. I am host Shelly Rood, and if you're tired of feeling like people just don't get why you jump in before you have it all figured out. Well, today's episode is for you. We explore what it means to build your tactical center when you're someone who learns by doing. And what Thomas Payne understood about choosing the few over convincing the money, you'll discover how to spot who's actually in your category, and the simple shift that stops you from exhausting yourself on people who will never understand your approach. This is Hardcore and At Ease.

A few years ago, I was on a first time coaching call with a young lady. This was when our office was based on Selfridge Air National Guard Base, and I'll never forget it because she was a fellow veteran and she said something to me that stopped me right away. She said, I'm so jealous of people like you who have figured out what you stand for and what you wanna do in life. What really hit me about her comment was that she thought that I represented someone who had it all figured out, but that's not what I represent at all. I represent a category of people who are hardcore about the process of figuring it out. We're the ones who don't wait for permission, and we try things before we're ready. We build while we learn. And if you're listening to this show, you're probably in that same category. The question isn't whether you've got it all figured out. The question is, are you hardcore about going forward anyway? Today I'm sharing what I've discovered about the category that we represent, the doers, the action takers, the ones who crave being around other people who build things. I'm exploring what makes us different and why so many people think that we're intellectually arrogant when we're really just action oriented. And the one thing that we need to understand about finding our people so that we can create this exponential impact together today I'm sharing the story of how I discovered that I represented a category of hardcore doers who don't wait for perfect conditions to build things. We're gonna talk about how this taught me that our greatest strength is also what makes us feel isolated. And there's one shift that I've learned that can help you recognize and lean into other action takers that are around you. And by the end, my hope is that you'll understand the category that you represent and one specific way to find your people so that your dreams don't just take flight. They have exponential impact. You're someone who takes action before you feel ready. You try things, you build things, you go for it, even when others are telling you that you should wait or we still have more things to plan out. But sometimes you feel intellectually arrogant or like you're operating on this completely different wavelength from the people around you. I know that you're not arrogant and you know that you're just oriented towards taking action, and that makes some people feel really uncomfortable. Let me take you through what I realized about the category that I represent and that you probably represent too. It started very early. I was in gymnastics at about three years old, and I did that throughout my entire childhood. It wasn't some crazy good prodigy that got all tens, but I was the kind of kid that wanted to try everything. In high school. I played nearly every sport that was offered, and no, I wasn't the best athlete, but I was hardcore about wanting to experience what each sport could teach me in college. I shifted athletics over to competing in the 22 small bore competitive shooting, and I joined a sorority. I disaffiliated the values there just weren't as aligned as I had hoped that they would be. And I joined the military. Each decision wasn't about having everything all figured out. It was about being willing to go for it and course correct as I learned. What was I trying to achieve? I don't know. I thought that I was just living my life and making choices and pursuing opportunities. I didn't realize that I was actually demonstrating a specific category of leadership with every decision. The stakes were real. Every choice meant committing fully and risking failure, and dealing with people who thought that I was too much. Or that I was moving too fast. Does that sound familiar? But here's what I discovered about our category. We're not trying to be different. We're trying to be useful. I worked for our family construction company from a very young age. My grandfather and his brothers had started it, and my grandfather always said that a project was never finished until it had a little bit of your blood in it. Now, he meant that literally because we were swinging hammers as construction workers, but he meant that from the heart too. You gotta put so much of your heart and soul into your work, and even if you're not swinging a hammer these days, I know that you're fully putting yourself into whatever it is that you're building. I spent a lot of years thinking that other people maybe just needed more information to get what I was doing, or they needed better plans or my vision wasn't clear enough. I've always wanted to overexplain and I always thought that maybe more people would become action takers like us, right? If we just keep pushing. But that tension was exhausting. And as a professional, I found myself surrounded by people who were also professionals that wanted to discuss and plan and analyze and prepare, and that's amazing. But I also wanted to test and build and adjust and improve. And I started thinking that I was impatient and that maybe I was pushing too hard. But then I read the book, snow Leopard by Category Pirate. And everything clicked. I felt so validated. What I realized is that I don't represent someone who has life figured out. I represent a category of people who are hardcore about figuring it out through action. We're the ones who build the plane while we fly it. We're the album artists. We're not the one hit wonders. We create beautiful, sustainable excellence through process mastery, not through perfect planning. We're hardcore because we've figured out that the process of going for it is the process of figuring it out. And we don't wait for certainty. We create certainty through action. And there's a crucial point here that I've learned. We crave and we need to be around other action takers so that our dreams and our goals don't just take flight, but have exponential impact. We're the big dreamers, and so we've seen that by representing the specific category of leader, the hardcore doers who figured out by going for it. Now we're gonna take a look at what this means for finding your people and creating the exponential impact that you know that you're capable of. Here's what I learned about our category of leaders. The young woman on that coaching call taught me something profound. People think that we have it all figured out because we're willing to act like we have it all figured out, and that's not arrogance. That's our natural operating system, and here's what makes us truly different. We are the category of people who understand that showing up to work every day is our live performance. When you see a band live, it's okay for them to make mistakes and to figure out and adjust and tune in real time. We adjust our approach as we're going, but we're also constantly building our album behind the scenes. We've got this collection of processes, systems. Think of excellence that we've honed in through repetition. We might look polished on the outside, but we're not one hit wonders that are hoping for another lucky break. We're the album artists that are committed to building sustainable excellence through process Mastery. This past weekend, my husband and I went to a concert together. We saw Ellison, Krause and Union Station. The musicians were beyond excellent. They are the best in the world, and it's so incredible when you can see and feel the years and years and years of craftsmanship that they've put into what they do. When people look at you as a leader, do they see someone who is randomly passionate about 10,000 million different projects? Because that's not what we're trying to get them to see. We represent long-term stability of leadership, people who have got some stuff figured out, and yes, we're moving forward and continuously changing and adjusting as we go. Just like the professional musicians on stage. A couple of years ago, we were at a totally different concert and we watched a fly buzz over the orchestra and like a Bugs Bunny cartoon. It landed on the symbol and just as the drummer was getting ready to hit it, he did bang. He hit that symbol and that fly shot up in the air and flew over the entire orchestra. It was absolutely hilarious. None of that could have been planned out. And it contributed to the experience that we had as an audience member. Those are the types of memories that we keep with us moving forward. That's the kind of adjustment and unexpected life that happens. As leaders, we have to be willing to embrace every day at work. As though we are performing a live performance and sometimes the set is really, really great and sometimes that fly just lands on the symbol and you have to laugh about it because it all adds up to years. Being committed to establishing sustainable excellence is process mastery at its finest. Let's go back to shooting just for a minute. That bullseye that we're always going for your tactical center. It's not about having perfect clarity and perfect drumbeats every time. It's about having a clear commitment to the process of getting through that music the way that you know that it should be played. When we're in that tee, that bullseye of target, we operate from that tactical center thinking, I will figure this out by doing this. When we hit our ambition, alignment of a, we align our energy with other people who are building things. Resourceful action. We use what we have, where we are to create what's next. And when we hit the G of generate momentum, we understand that individual action becomes exponential when we find our people. That's the key that we're talking about today. And E, we're expecting excellence because we refine through repetition, not through perfect planning. Finally, we trust the process. We believe that taking action creates clarity, not the other way around, but people do misunderstand us quite often. And here's what happens. Many people can view us as intellectually arrogant or far beyond anything that they themselves could do or be, even though maybe we're not, we're just oriented differently. While other people are asking, what if it doesn't work? We're the ones asking, what if it does? Others are planning and we're already at the testing phase, others are discussing, and we've already got some building going on, and this creates a gap that feels like intellectual arrogance to them and isolation to us. The biggest challenge for our category isn't learning how to be hardcore, it's learning how to recognize other hardcore doers around us and lean into them with supportive encouragement because here's what I've discovered, we need each other not just for encouragement, but for that exponential impact. One person is one person, but when hardcore doers find each other, we don't just accomplish individual goals. We build movements, companies solutions that can change entire industries. One such example is how our woman veteran strong project even got started back in 2019. I had started to live out publicly, my passion for taking care of hardcore women. These were women that work in non-traditional industries of my own accord. I walked into a veteran's action coalition in my local county, and I was just there trying to represent. Perhaps a need for strong women to come together and collaborate. And what happened that day was nothing short of exponential impact. We went around the room and introduced ourselves and what we represented. And after that meeting, a gentleman named Chaplain Brian Webb walked up to me and said, Shelly, I have a pot of money that I've just been granted and I'm looking for a woman to run a peer project for military women. Right there. Perfect. Yes. That's what I do. When you're hardcore about processes and symptoms and you know your passions and you put it out into the universe, magic can happen, but you have to understand and take that risk of what it is you think that you're interested in, and that's a special gift. Not everybody operates the way that we operate. My aunt once told me, you've lived a hundred ways, Shelly, that I've always been too scared to do, and that's not because I'm braver than my aunt, it's because I'm different than her. And I represent a category that processes fear differently. We feel that fear and we use it as information about what's worth pursuing. In that book, snow Leopard, the Category Pirates, talk about how legendary companies don't compete in existing markets. They create new ones, and that's exactly what we do as hardcore leaders. We don't just try to be better at existing approaches. We create new approaches entirely. We're category creators in leadership, in our careers, in our impact. Now you understand that you don't fit in because you're not supposed to fit in. Since I mentioned Thomas Payne in the opening, let me give you that context that shaped my thinking about finding your few dedicated followers. In 1776, during one of the darkest periods of the American Revolution, Thomas Payne wrote. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis shrink from the service of their country, but he that stands by it now deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Pain understood something that every hardcore leader discovers. When pressure increases, most people disappear. They don't leave dramatically, they just become unavailable. They're too busy for the difficult projects. They're overwhelmed when you need them the most. They're dealing with personal stuff every time. Excellence demands some type of sacrifice, and we're not judging them. That's not what this is about. This is about recognizing that you don't win with summer soldiers. You win with dedicated patriots who will stand when everyone else is sitting down. You win with people who understands that the mission is bigger than their comfort. When you're building something that matters, when you're pursuing excellence that costs something, you need people who show up in the winter, not just when the weather's nice. That's why the category recognition system matters so much. You're not looking for people who are excited about your vision when it's easy. You're looking for the people who will build it with you. When things get hard, those are your people. Everyone else is a summer soldier. We've talked a little about why people can misunderstand our approach, so let's get practical about finding your people and how to create exponential impact together. In order to apply today's lesson to your life, we're going through a three-step recognition system, and step one is to actually own your category. Stop apologizing for being action oriented. You're not impatient. You're hardcore about the process of figuring it out. I know that you're not arrogant. You're committed to building rather than just discussing. So write this down. I represent a category of people who are hardcore about going for it. Take that and put it where you can see it every day and notice when you start explaining or justifying your action orientation. That's beautiful and it's a sign that you might be trying to fit into someone else's category instead of owning your own. The second step is to recognize other category members. Look around your organization, your industry at networking events. Who else are you seeing that's building while others are still planning? Who else is out there testing their ideas instead of perfecting proposals. I was out at Northern Strike a couple weeks ago, and we got to see some drones being tested. There are companies that have these prototypes already hitting the fields. They're already in the hands of airmen and soldiers who are breaking them just through general use that has to happen. We have to test, we have to break things in order to figure out the very best viable product that we want to bring into the world. I love that you're not afraid of it. So look around and look for other people who are also not afraid to break things. Who around you gets energized by challenges instead of getting overwhelmed, listen for things like let's try it and see. We can adjust as we go. What if we just started. They get excited about problems to solve, not just plans to execute. And this brings us to the most important step and where we apply everything that we've covered about moving from coordination into true collaboration. Step three is to lean into your people, and this is where we apply everything that we've covered from moving from coordination to true collaboration. When you identify another hardcore doer, you wanna lean into them with supportive encouragement because there's not that many of us out there. And when you lean into them with supportive encouragement, you're not saying that they need your help. But that exponential impact happens when we recognize each other and we build together. A few minutes ago we talked about the G in target for generate momentum, and there's a caution here to raise when it comes to finding your people and generating that momentum. What you don't wanna do is project your goals onto them. Don't ask things like, what can you do for my vision? Instead, ask, what can we build together that neither one of us could create alone? I can't express deep enough the importance of that lesson. There might be incredible people around you, but if you're just shoving your goals and your dreams and their face instead of working together to create something together, then you're missing out. The true value of the leadership that you bring to the table. Now, what this looks like in practice is instead of trying to convert these planning oriented people around you actually invest your energy in the action oriented People that you discover support their experiments. When they invite you to come out to something, actually go and celebrate their course corrections. Because they're gonna break things just like you break things and I break things, and that's how we build, right? And most importantly, we need to be looking for opportunities to truly collaborate and not just coordinate. That is something that is really being missed in networking and leadership today. There's a leadership phrase that I love to lean into, and that's that we lift collaboration over competition. There's another layer in there that gets missed. What about collaboration? You see that's where we're going wrong. We understand that competition can be a bad thing when we're trying to create exponential impact and we wanna work together. But how many networking meetings have you left with your hands full of handshakes and your pockets full of business cards? And you might as well just throw 'em all away. Collaboration. So much deeper than coordination. And coordination is where people are stopping. We're getting those leads. We're getting those phone numbers, we're getting those names. We're shaking hands. Yeah, sure. I'll pass out your brochures. I'll put your flyers on my table. It's not good enough. Don't be afraid to say that's not good enough. I really appreciate that, and let's sit down and have a meeting where we could build something together. That's what true collaboration is all about. And as you're working forward to building these collaboration opportunities, here's how to know when it's working. You'll stop feeling isolated in all of your beautiful action orientation, and you'll start feeling energized by the other doers around you. Your individual projects are gonna start connecting with other people's projects, and together you're gonna be creating exponential impact that none of you could have achieved alone. Even your dreams are gonna get bigger, higher, farther, faster than you ever imagined, but you have to push yourself past coordination and get to that collaboration phase. And here's how to do it. There's one clear action here that I want you to take this week. Identify one other hardcore doer in your sphere and reach out to them with supportive encouragement. Now, this is not a networking request and it's not a business proposal. Just recognition from one category member to another. Something like. I've been watching how you approach challenges, and I appreciate how you always seem to build solutions instead of just talking about problems. When you start to recognize and connect with other hardcore doers, something remarkable happens. You really do stop feeling like you're pushing people uphill and you start feeling like you're building alongside people who share your orientation toward action. That project that I shared with you, woman, veteran Strong, I'm not doing it alone. I can't do it alone. The vision is way too big. We've got 11 team members now that are driving that forward and it started with one deep collaboration opportunity. Your dreams don't just take flight. They can have exponential impact 'cause you're creating something with other people who understand that excellence comes through process mastery, not perfect planning. Find people who are already out there doing the thing and have deep open conversation with them over a period of time. These types of collaborative opportunities don't happen overnight. It's usually done through a series of meetings and coffees and relationship building and deep, deep internal trust has to be there in order to lift that mission forward. With that hard work, you'll discover this really deep satisfaction that comes from finding your people, the ones who like you are out there and they put a little bit of their blood into every project that they do because they know that that's what it means to be hardcore. But if you keep trying to convert the planning oriented people around you, and if you keep apologizing for your action orientation. If you're gonna stay isolated and you're gonna keep feeling frustrated as a leader, you'll waste your energy trying to fit into categories that don't serve you, and you'll miss out on that exponential impact that comes from building with other hardcore doers. We are the category of people who figure it out by going for it. We're not intellectually arrogant. We're action oriented. We're not impatient. We're hardcore about the process of building excellence through repetition. Your job isn't to have it all figured out. Your job is to be hardcore about figuring it out and to find other people who share that commitment so that you can build something exponential together. If you recognize yourself in this category and you're ready to find your people. Hit subscribe. Pop over to join dot others over self.com and connect with so many of us who are out there in the world doing incredible things. Now inside our online community, you'll notice that I'm really honest with you in there. Sometimes I still catch myself trying to explain my approach to people who will never understand it. Just last week, I found myself in a meeting where I was forcibly trying to justify why we needed to start testing an idea even before we had finished the research. Old habits die hard even when we're teaching this framework. Working through this category recognition concept reminds me of early days working with my grandfather in his construction company when I thought that everyone naturally put blood into their work, but they don't. I was confused when I discovered that not everyone operates that way. You and I are very special. Know what we've covered today is the foundational understanding. For you being able to recognize your category from discovering that you represent hardcore doers who figured out by going for it, to understanding why it's okay that W2 thinkers don't understand your Schedule C approach. And we also implemented a three step system for finding your actual people. We covered ancient wisdom with Thomas Payne. Learned a couple of practical mechanics. We gave you a roadmap of how to let go of the wrong people so that you can invest in the right ones. So try this, experiment with me for this week until I see you next Tuesday. Instead of trying to convince somebody who doesn't get your approach, just leave it and redirect that energy towards someone else who does. I really wanna see what you'll discover about how much more. Productive and energizing it feels to shift over and invest in people who share your same operating system. Now, if you're thinking about bringing leadership development into your organization that helps people recognize and work within their actual category instead of just trying to convert everyone into the same approach, well, that's the exact kind of work that we do, and it transforms entire cultures. Speaking of category creation, if you wanna dive deeper into this concept, then I have that book for you that I want you to read. It's called Snow Leopard and down in the show notes, there's an affiliate link to it. It's written by a group called Category Pirates, and they also have an amazing substack newsletter for you to read. This is the book that really helped me understand how legendary companies and leaders don't compete in existing categories. We are out there creating entirely new ones. The most effective leaders in history understood that excellence creates categories, not consensus. Your job isn't to make everyone else understand your approach. Your job is to be hardcore about finding your people and building something exponential together. If you recognize yourself in this category and you're ready to stop apologizing for your action orientation, go ahead and hit subscribe. You can count on me every Tuesday for another dose of sustainable excellence, practical wisdom, specifically for hardcore leaders who refuse to go over the edge. So I'll see you next Tuesday. This has been hardcore and at ease. Make sure you keep your edge without going over the edge.