Back in 2023, a crew of MSPs and I spent a day with Navy SEAL vet and Discovery TV show star Joel Lambert, on his farm here in Tennessee.
If you’re not familiar with him, Joel was the star of the TV show Lone Target, which put a new twist on “survival” reality TV, pitting him and his escape and evade skills against the world’s most elite military and law enforcement tracking teams in a real game of cat and mouse.
Dropped at a secret starting point in each episode, Joel got a small head start to evade capture by a highly specialized military or law enforcement tracking team to reach a designated end point. He had to do it in less than 2 days, leaning on his survival skills as much as his escape and evade expertise. The only tools he was given were a basic survival kit and a single canteen of water.
During our day with Joel, we drove about an hour north of Franklin to his farm, where he and 4 other military vets taught us basic tracking and survival skills, everything from tracking a human being to water purification. It poured rain that day, but that didn’t deter us.
One of the skills we had to learn was how to start a fire when everything around us was soaking wet with high winds. Since we were given a box of matches, this seemed like a relatively easy task. After all, we didn’t have to rub sticks or bang rocks to create a spark. Turns out it’s a lot harder than you think.
After multiple matches and unsuccessful attempts, our match supply now down to 5, one of the vets coaching us said, “Maybe you should rethink your entire strategy since every attempt you made has been unsuccessful.” Good counsel. It’s easy to get stuck in doing the same thing, over and over again, expecting it to work because you’re SURE it SHOULD work. There’s a lot of wisdom in this, including the reason why you need experienced coaches advising you even when you’re doing what are seemingly the easiest, most obvious things.
So we changed the way we were starting the fire, changing the way we stacked the kindling, making sure we had a healthy flame going before adding more kindling and wood. Finally, success…with one match left to spare.
When I started my business 23+ years ago, I felt like I had an unlimited stack of matches to strike…an endless supply of new opportunities and a lot of years ahead of me to grind it out. Now that I’m 53, I can tell you I don’t feel like I have an endless supply left. I’m not down to one, but I’m a LOT more cautious about the “matches” I strike, carefully selecting which opportunities to say yes to and which initiatives I need to put my full effort behind, and a LOT more intentional about where and how I allocate my time, money, attention and resources.
Because, at some point, we ALL run out of matches.
I wish someone had told me that back when I was in my early 20s, when my youth and ignorance gave me a sense of being indestructible and unstoppable. There wasn’t an injury I couldn’t easily recover from, a “bad” year I couldn’t make up, a situation I couldn’t move beyond. It was only God’s grace that kept me from ending up in a very, very bad place.
So, if you’re still wandering through life or business, unsure of what you want to be when you grow up, without specific goals and milestones to get there, still undecided on what your “Mona Lisa” is, you better take a minute to think through where you’re going and what you really want.
You might not have as many matches left as you think.
If you’ve been burning through time, energy, and resources trying to prove yourself in this industry — now’s your chance to be recognized for the fire you did build. MSP Titans Of The Industry honors the top-performing MSPs who are doing more than just surviving — they’re leading, growing and setting the standard for what real success looks like.
If that’s you — or who you’re becoming — apply now!
