I finished my walk the other way.

If I'd left dinner thirty seconds earlier I'm not writing this.

A couple weeks ago I was in Sedalia, Missouri for a client. Small town. After dinner I went out to walk because I hadn't hit my steps.

Twenty yards in front of me, a building collapsed.

Whole building. On the ground. On a street where nothing was happening ten seconds before.

If I'd left dinner thirty seconds earlier I'm not writing this.

Here's what I did.

I turned around and finished my walk the other way.

Told my client. Called Amy. Posted it on Instagram. Went back to the hotel and opened the model.

Total time I spent thinking about the fact that I almost died: about two minutes.

I've been chewing on that number more than the thirty seconds.

Here's the week I was in. Blue Ocean is mid-raise and we're spending into growth at the same time. Every day I'm running spend against pipeline, making sure we're not getting ahead of our skis. Fine line, not much room in it.

So a building falls down in front of me and I process it, file it, and get back to the spreadsheet before bed.

I say business should support life, not consume it. I've said it right here. I say it to clients. I've got fourteen months left in a five-year sprint to own twenty businesses and I tell people the whole point of it is freedom and time.

And a building came down twenty yards from me and it got two minutes.

I don't know what that is.

Part of me says that's the job. You can't stop every time life gets loud. Owners who fall apart at the first scare don't close raises and don't make payroll. Getting back to the model is what the people counting on me need.

Part of me says a man who can absorb that in two minutes has trained something out of himself he's going to want back.

I can't tell which one it is. From the inside they feel the same.

That's the part worth your time, because a lot of you are on the same line and nobody's named it for you.

You're capable. Something goes wrong and you're calm, you're useful, you make the calls, you move on. Everybody around you reads that as strength.

But you can't tell anymore whether you're steady or whether you've just gotten good at not feeling it. Nothing tests for it. It doesn't show up on the P&L.

Here's where I landed two weeks later.

I don't have a choice. The raise still has to close. The plan still has to get built. That work doesn't care what happened on a sidewalk in Missouri.

So I take the walk. I hug Amy and I pray with her. I get on the floor with my girls in the time I've actually got. And then I get back on the grind.

That's the answer I came to.

What I can't tell you is whether I came to it or whether it's just what I was always going to do.

Here's the one thing I'd do with this if I were you.

Ask the person who lives with you. Not your team, not your business partner. Your spouse.

Ask them when the last time was that something actually got to you.

If they can name it, you're fine. You're steady.

If they have to think about it for a while, that's your answer.

I still haven't asked Amy. Two weeks and plenty of chances at the dinner table, and I keep not doing it.

The reason this is hard to answer alone is that you're grading your own paper. Same reason owners can't see which part of the business is exposed until it breaks. That's what coaching is for. Someone outside your head, looking at your calendar and your numbers, telling you what you can't see. DM us or book a call at owners.club.