---------------------------------- Struggling to make success in your business repeatable? Path for Growth created a free workbook and video course to help you operationalize—so you can build consistency, reduce stress, and create space for growth.
Too often we underrate the importance of patience, but sustainable growth will never happen overnight. If you want to make a lasting impact, patience is the price you’ll have to pay. In this episode, Alex kicks off a new series where he’ll be sharing principles, questions, and action items to help you become a leader who can sit with the discomfort of waiting. Make sure to follow the podcast so you don’t miss the next installment!
Episode Recap:
Patience is the price of impact (2:17)
Are you willing to wait? (5:08)
Growth is like an Allen wrench: for maximum leverage, you have to pull back (8:05)
Many of us are far too comfortable with underrating patience (12:22)
Growth without patience is not sustainable (13:25)
Patience is uncomfortable and even painful at times (18:08)
---------------------------------- Make your business feel less chaotic and more predictable. Get the free workbook and video course from Path for Growth to start building the clarity and structure you need for healthy growth.
---------------------------------- Struggling to make success in your business repeatable? Path for Growth created a free workbook and video course to help you operationalize—so you can build consistency, reduce stress, and create space for growth.
Too often we underrate the importance of patience, but sustainable growth will never happen overnight. If you want to make a lasting impact, patience is the price you’ll have to pay. In this episode, Alex kicks off a new series where he’ll be sharing principles, questions, and action items to help you become a leader who can sit with the discomfort of waiting. Make sure to follow the podcast so you don’t miss the next installment!
---------------------------------- Make your business feel less chaotic and more predictable. Get the free workbook and video course from Path for Growth to start building the clarity and structure you need for healthy growth.
Some of you, because I've talked to you, it's like you wanna be married, but you're not married right now. What do you need? You need patience. Some of you, you're in a job that you're like, man, I don't know if I should be in this job anymore, but I I don't see a bunch of alternatives. What do you need?
Alex Judd:
You need patience. Some of you right now, man, the stage of where your business is at, you're like, man, I I wanna be in this business, but I need for it to be at a different stage. I don't wanna be buried by this business. I wanna work on this business. What do you need to have?
Alex Judd:
You need to have patience. Some of you right now, you're like, man, it feels like we have stagnated as a business. And in some ways, like, I need to create this into something that I can own and not run. What are you gonna have to have? You're gonna have to have patience.
Alex Judd:
And there's gonna be pain associated with this season and pain is not always bad. Sometimes discomfort can be the indicator that you're in the greatest season of growth of your life, of your career and of your business. Hey there, if you have not yet met, my name's Alex Judd. I'm the founder of Path for Growth, and this is the Path for Growth podcast. Now as a business, we exist to help impact driven leaders like you step into who they were created to be so that others benefit and God is glorified.
Alex Judd:
Hey, before we jump into today's episode, I want you to know about a wildly valuable resource that our team created for you and the people you lead. One of the most common pieces of feedback we get on the podcast is that you wanna be able to take notes so that you can reference the episode later or share it with people you are responsible for developing, but there's one big problem. You're often listening to the podcast on a run while driving, or I've even to talk to people that are listening to us in the shower. So that's why we started creating the Growth Guide. This resource will distill all of the key principles, quotes, and action items from every single episode into a downloadable PDF that you can share with your team.
Alex Judd:
Additionally, we're gonna include application questions and additional resources for anyone that wants to go further on the topic of the week. We are all about helping you and your business grow in a healthy way, and we know that healthy growth always involves intentional action. This guide exists to help you take intentional action on what you and your team learn each week from the podcast. Get the Growth Guide by clicking the link that's in the show notes. Let's go.
Alex Judd:
We say it all the time, this podcast and this business being Path for Growth exists for the impact driven leader. Now, let's think about what that means. To be impact driven means that you are motivated by the audacious belief that you can actually make a difference, that life isn't happening to you and you're not a victim of circumstances and outcomes. You certainly don't get to impose your will on circumstances and outcomes. However, you do get to be an active participant.
Alex Judd:
Right? And you do get to influence circumstances and outcomes. You can make an impact, but the person that we created the business for is not just an impact driven person. This business exists for impact driven leaders. And to be an impact driven leader, well, what does that mean?
Alex Judd:
It means that you are committed to making a difference, making an impact with, in, through, and for other people. So let's think about that as a definition real quick. To be an impact driven leader means that you are committed to making a difference within, through, and for other people. So now I I have a question for you. What's the price of impact?
Alex Judd:
It was so helpful for me, as I was thinking about kind of the person that we exist to serve to ask this question. Okay. What's the price of impact? And here's how I got to that question. Impact is inarguably something that's incredibly valuable.
Alex Judd:
Right? And it's something that certainly everyone who's listening to this podcast and everyone that's part of the Path for Growth community deems as valuable. Impact in itself is valuable. And, well, anything with great value has a cost. Right?
Alex Judd:
So if impact has great value, it has a cost. Let's ask the question, what's the cost? Like, what do we have to pay? What's the price? And I actually think that there's a multitude of ways that you could answer this question.
Alex Judd:
But, in my time, both pursuing being an impact driven leader myself, working with impact driven leaders on our team and in our customer base, observing impact driven leaders for years now, and and certainly building a business that exists to serve this person, there's one variable. There's one cost that we all have to pay if we wanna make an impact that I actually believe is nonnegotiable. So that kinda sets us up for this series. What is the nonnegotiable price of impact? Patience.
Alex Judd:
Patience is the nonnegotiable price of impact. And that's why we're going to be doing a deep dive study into the value, virtue, pursuit, and practice of patience on the podcast for the next couple of weeks. So so what's a definition of patience? Well, let's start with a formal definition. It's the capacity to tolerate challenges or delays without getting upset.
Alex Judd:
If we wanna make a difference, if we wanna make an impact, maybe it's in our marriage, maybe it's in the life of our children, maybe it's in our business, maybe it's in the community that we live and operate in, maybe it's in the marketplace as a whole or in our industry. If we wanna do that, what do we have to have? We have to have patience. And what is patience? It's the capacity.
Alex Judd:
It's this internal ability that you have within yourself to tolerate challenges or delays without getting upset. And in some ways, I would say without quitting, without tapping out, without hitting the eject button. If we were to simplify that definition to three words that we're gonna use a lot over the course of this episode and this series, I would say that patience is a willingness to wait. Because if we're going to make a lasting, healthy, and sustainable impact, what do we have to be able to do? Well, we have to have a willingness to wait.
Alex Judd:
Organizationally, this is necessary in every stage of business. Right? You have to wait. You have to be willing to wait to find the right hire. You have to be willing to wait to hit a worthwhile goal.
Alex Judd:
You have to be willing to wait for the team to buy into an idea. You have to be willing to wait to find the right formula for customer demand. You have to be willing to wait to launch a product or project or service. You have to be willing to wait to reach a certain stage of business that you've always wanted to reach. You have to be willing to wait and work through a process to be able to fully delegate in a healthy way.
Alex Judd:
You have to be willing to wait to have other leaders that can make decisions on your team. You have to be willing to wait to name a successor. You have to be willing to wait to go on an off the grid vacation. And all of this is actually possible. That's what I actually believe, and you better believe that too.
Alex Judd:
It's possible, but what's not possible is for you to snap your fingers and for all of those things to happen immediately. What do you have to do? You have to be willing to wait. We've gotta be able to cultivate within ourselves the patience to consistently pursue a worthwhile goal. This is one of the things that human beings are uniquely capable of.
Alex Judd:
Right? We have the ability to envision something that doesn't currently exist and then be about the business of creating it. However, if it's worthwhile and if it makes a difference and if it makes an impact, if it's something that you're actually gonna be proud of, what do you have to have? You have to have time to create that thing. Anything worthwhile takes time, and if it's gonna take time, you've gotta be willing to keep putting in the deposits, to keep taking the steps, to keep investing the effort, to keep bringing your best, to keep applying excellence, you've got to be willing to wait.
Alex Judd:
And what's crazy is that the value or the impact on the back end is often determined by our willingness to endure and wait on the front end. I learned this in business through a very simple illustration, and the illustration is an Allen wrench. Right? If you wanna pull forward a little bit and have a little bit of leverage, you only have to pull back a little bit, and then you can pull forward. If you wanna pull forward optimally, maximally, if you wanna get maximum leverage, what do you have to do?
Alex Judd:
You have to pull back the Allen wrench as far as you possibly can so that you get maximum leverage to pull forward. But so often, leaders and organizations aren't structured in such a way that they value a long pullback. We we make these little minute pullbacks, and then we expect massive leverage to move forward. And in reality, man, the people that make an impact, the leaders that make a difference in a healthy way over an extended period of time, what do they do? They have the ability to pull back when it's hidden, when people aren't celebrating it, when it doesn't seem.
Alex Judd:
They're patient, and because they're patient, they pull back. And then when the pull forward actually happens, it actually results in people getting served in a really meaningful way and an impact being made. Patience is also incomprehensively valuable in our personal life. You hopefully know this. You gotta have patience to get married.
Alex Judd:
You gotta have patience to have kids. I think it's such a god ordained thing that it's like, oh, you wanna have a kid? Okay. Minimum nine months to prepare. Minimum.
Alex Judd:
Right? I think that's so good. We gotta have patience. We gotta be willing to wait. You gotta wait for kids to leave.
Alex Judd:
Right? You gotta have patience, and some of you are in that stage right now. Then you gotta wait for kids to come back, and you gotta have to be patient for that. You gotta wait to lose weight. You gotta wait to know your calling.
Alex Judd:
You gotta wait to have answers to some of life's biggest questions. You gotta wait sometimes to heal. Sometimes we're sick or sometimes we're broken. Sometimes it's our heart that's really hurt. And it's not like we can just snap our fingers and for that to be fixed, it takes time.
Alex Judd:
Sometimes you have to wait to find joy on the other side of a season of struggle and suffering. In so many ways, this virtue of patience can be so valuable both organizationally and personally. And and I believe the reason in so many ways why it's so valuable for us to spend time, really meditating, studying, and applying this virtue of patience is because it's connected to the biblical ideas of humility, endurance, forbearance, delayed gratification, and self control. Now we can look at that whole list of virtues and and say, man, that's so good. And one of the things that we have to recognize, if we think humility, endurance, forbearance, delayed gratification, and self control are good, well, without a shadow of a doubt in the biblical corpus, embedded in that word cloud is always going to be the word patience.
Alex Judd:
Patience is one of the fruits of the spirit. Love, joy, peace, patience, the willingness to wait. Faith, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self control. And as I was kind of starting to look into this virtue of patience and starting to think about what it would look like for us to do, on patience and its direct connections and practice for impact driven leaders, what I learned is that, man, the etymology of patience is actually directly connected to the idea of suffering. And and in so many ways, that's what patience is.
Alex Judd:
Right? It's the tolerance of pain for a desired outcome. It's the the willingness to delay gratification to say, I'm not gonna prioritize current present comfort. I'm going to actually delay present comfort inconvenience for the sake of long term growth service and impact. And that connects directly to a principle we say all the time on the podcast that growth and comfort never coexist.
Alex Judd:
I often think, man, our company is called path for growth, but we could have just as easily called it path for discomfort. And that is a way less marketable name for your company, but it's actually true. Right? That if people are genuinely looking to grow, if they're genuinely looking to serve, if they're genuinely looking to make an impact, what's it gonna cost them? It's gonna cost some of their present comfort, but the trade off there, if you apply yourself intentionally and if you sacrifice with a sense of purpose, is that by delaying gratification, you're ultimately going to create impact.
Alex Judd:
And because it's so intimately intertwined with these ideas of humility and endurance and self control and delayed gratification, and it's the willingness to tolerate pain for a desired outcome. And, you know, it makes sense that it's a quality that's sorely needed today. And yet, I also think it's a quality that is ignored at best and mocked or degraded at worst. You know, so often we think that, oh, patience is a good thing to have. It's just not for me and my season or my stage, or we kinda laugh about it and we joke about it and we make fun of the idea of patience.
Alex Judd:
I've I've literally, been around people that say, I agree that patience is a virtue. It's just one that I don't have. And I know that's a little bit of a sarcastic joke, and we can talk about, oh, I'm just not patient, so we can laugh about it. But one of the things that we should reckon with is that if we don't have patience, we shouldn't expect to make a lasting impact. And therefore, it's probably better not to laugh about it.
Alex Judd:
It's probably better to ask the question, man, how do I go about cultivating it? How do I go about growing into patience? Now, it's probably not fully accurate to frame this podcast as you can't have impact without patients. I actually think that we've probably all seen businesses and maybe even known people, maybe we've even been these people, that create massive waves, like create huge impact without exercising any patience. They didn't do any of what we're talking about.
Alex Judd:
But here's what I know to be true, is that every single time, if you think about the case studies, and some of them are playing out right now, every single time this occurs where you have massive waves, massive impact without paying the price for impact, what is revealed? Well, it's corrosive to the soul, You know, it's kind of what does it profit the man to gain the whole world but lose its soul? It's that type of thing. Right? It's like they gain everything really fast.
Alex Judd:
This is why Proverbs says do not prioritize hasty wealth because wealth gained hastily will dwindle, and it encourages the value of little by little over time because so often, we don't have the character to keep us where this type of growth takes us. It's corrosive to our soul, and we don't have the internal infrastructure to be able to hold up, to be able to bear the magnitude of results that fast growth creates. What else is true? That that type of rapid growth, I would characterize it as unhealthy growth, growth that isn't, supported and rooted in the virtue of patience. It's detrimental to relationships.
Alex Judd:
Right? We we see people all the time that it's like, yeah, your business, you know, five x over three years. Awesome. Great for you. How's your marriage?
Alex Judd:
And that's not to say that you can't five x a business in three years and have a great and healthy marriage. It's just not the norm. And what I do know is that if you're gonna pursue that level of intensity, it better be matched with the same degree, if not more intentionality. But so often, what we see is that when people pursue impact and growth without patience, it's corrosive to the soul, it's detrimental to relationships, and it's ultimately unsustainable. This is what Proverbs is talking about when it says wealth gain hastily will dwindle.
Alex Judd:
That it's like, yeah, you might be this incredible flash in the pan that everyone cheers for, everyone notices, your numbers skyrocket, it's this external growth that's absolutely insane. But is it sustainable? Or are you the marathon runner that I've been more times than I care to admit, where the gun fires at the beginning, I mean, you're looking like a world beater and everyone's like, holy cow, that guy could win this race if he continues. But that phrase, if he continues, is actually really important because almost always, if he continues at that pace, well you can't continue at that pace. And so, are you running a marathon or are you running a sprint?
Alex Judd:
So many of you that I know, you want to run a marathon, or you wanna run an ultra marathon, or you wanna be the type of leader that runs their marathon and empowers other people to run marathons too. And if that's the case, then you're what we would refer to as a long game leader, and you have to consider. It's not an option. It's a non negotiable thing you have to consider. You have to consider the sustainability of your strategy.
Alex Judd:
This is why I've been so enamored lately with this idea of long game leadership. It's the thing that we're gonna be spending three days in October at our in person experience diving into as a path for growth communities because, man, we choose a theme every single year. As the leaders of our community get together, we say, man, what's gonna be the thing that's gonna jolt us to think about our business, our life, and our leadership in new ways if we really dive deep into it? And and I was just it became so excited about this idea of long game leadership because the leaders that I most respect, what's true about them? They're playing the long game.
Alex Judd:
They're not as distracted or enamored with these things that are superficial or temporarily convenient or comfortable or popular, right? They're saying, man, how do I invest my time, energy, resources now so that it has the greatest tail, not just for me, but for other people? That's what we're talking about when we're talking about long game leadership, and that's one of the reasons why I'm so excited for that three day experience in Austin in October. But, this idea of patience really, for me, was a great way to lay the foundation for what we're gonna be diving deep into, in that experience in October. Because if we are going to be people, if we are going to be leaders that make a lasting, healthy, and sustainable impact, what has to be true?
Alex Judd:
Well, we have to be a people of patience. And so, I started writing this and I was like, man, this is more than just an episode. I think that this is a series, and here's why I think this series is so important for us to spend legitimate time on. Number one, when I say it's non negotiable, I actually think it's non negotiable. Like, if we want to be people of impact, we have to be people of patience.
Alex Judd:
And that's just the way reality is structured. And because it's so abnormal and because it's so countercultural, it's gonna be have it's gonna be something that most of us won't stumble into. It's gonna be something that we have to intentionally understand and cultivate. And so that's the first reason why is because it's nonnegotiable. And, man, the things that are nonnegotiable as it relates to impact are things that I wanna study and be really familiar with.
Alex Judd:
Number two is because of the pain of patience. We said that patience in so many ways is the willingness to tolerate pain in pursuit of a desired outcome. And, I mean, that says it. Right? Patience can be painful.
Alex Judd:
And so what do you have to have if you're going to be a leader that exercises patience? You gotta have some sense of encouragement. You gotta have some sense of hope. You gotta have some sense of, man, this is nested in some greater purpose, and my character is being developed. And this is the type of leader that I'm called to be.
Alex Judd:
And although no one else acts this way right now, it seems like this is the type of leader that I want to be. And, man, that's gonna be painful. That's gonna feel like struggle. You're gonna wanna tap out at times. And so I wanna record this series because I know there's people right now that you're listening to this and you're like, man, I am being required to have patience right now.
Alex Judd:
Some of you, because I talked to you, it's like you wanna be married, but you're not married right now. What do you need? You need patience. Some of you, you're in a job that you're like, man, I don't know if I should be in this job anymore, but I I don't see a bunch of alternatives. What do you need?
Alex Judd:
You need patience. Some of you right now, man, the stage of where your business is at, you're like, man, I wanna be in this business, but I need for it to be at a different stage. I don't wanna be buried by this business. I wanna work on this business. What do you need to have?
Alex Judd:
You need to have patience. Some of you right now, you're like, man, it feels like we have stagnated as a business. And in some ways, like, I need to create this into something that I can own and not run. What are you gonna have to have? You're gonna have to have patience.
Alex Judd:
And there's gonna be pain associated with this season, and pain is not always bad. Sometimes discomfort can be the indicator that you're in the greatest season of growth of your life, of your career, and of your business. So what I wanna make sure you do is that you stay encouraged, that you stay focused, you stay diligent, you keep serving people, you keep glorifying God, and that you don't hit the eject button before you should. And we're gonna get into it in the next episode, like, the difference between productive discomfort and unproductive discomfort because that's a, like, critically important distinction that wise leaders always focus on. But, man, what do I need you to have if you're gonna be a patient leader?
Alex Judd:
I need you to have the willingness to tolerate the pain in pursuit of the desired outcome. And so why this series? Well, number one, it's a nonnegotiable. Number two, we gotta be able to endure the pain associated with patients. And then number three, and we've already kind of alluded to it, the value of a word of encouragement and empathy.
Alex Judd:
I've been in seasons of my life that required intense patience, that I was waiting. And there were times in those seasons where I started to lose hope, and I almost did what I just talked about where, like, I hit the eject button. I almost said I can't do this anymore. I almost said I don't wanna do this anymore. And in reality, it wasn't that I couldn't do it anymore, it was that I was losing my patience.
Alex Judd:
And almost every single time, God placed a person in my life that was able to offer a word of encouragement to say keep going, don't you dare stop. Don't you dare quit. You keep moving forward. Or they were to offer empathy, and they were able to say, hey, man. I've been where you are, and I know what it feels like.
Alex Judd:
And I know that it sucks right now, but your current circumstances do not determine your future reality. And sometimes, you don't need to leave. You don't need to exit. You don't need to find a way around. You need to figure out how to go through.
Alex Judd:
And so what I wanna provide you with here in this series is a word of encouragement, but also a word of empathy and to let you know that it's like this is a path that people have traversed before. Right? Every business that was ever built that made a healthy and sustainable impact required patience, and success leaves clues. So you're not the only one. Praise God for that.
Alex Judd:
And we can learn from people that have walked this path before. And in doing so, I think you will feel really hopeful about your ability to endure. So what are we gonna walk through in this series? Well, we're gonna focus the next three episodes on three questions. Number one is what does patients know?
Alex Judd:
I'm gonna give you some principles that are gonna be really critical for you to understand if you're gonna be the type of person that has the patience necessary to create a healthy impact. Number two, what does a patient leader do? We're gonna talk about what does it look like to make sure that you're setting yourself up to be patient. And then finally, how do you cultivate patients? What are the daily rhythms, practices, habits?
Alex Judd:
What are the things that we can make sure we have in our life so that we cultivate a sense of patience? Because I deeply believe this is the person, the man, the woman, the leader, the Christ follower, the community leader that you are called to be if you're an impact driven leader. And the way that I'm kinda putting together this series for the podcast, because I've been thinking about this for a while, is I'm gonna combine the best of what I've learned, what I've read, and what I've experienced or observed on this topic, and we're gonna just organize it. And what does patients know? What does patients do?
Alex Judd:
And then how do you cultivate it? And so how do I want you to engage with this series? Well, the first thing that I would tell you is make sure you subscribe to the podcast. This is a means of helping ensure you follow through. Right?
Alex Judd:
Because it is a series. We wanna make sure you get every episode. So we're gonna be releasing them over the course of the next couple weeks. I wanna make sure you get them as soon as they come out. So please, please, please subscribe to the podcast.
Alex Judd:
And then I've got three actions for you. Listen thoughtfully. It would be a little bit ironic to listen to a podcast series on patients at two x. Right? So maybe don't do that on this one.
Alex Judd:
It would be a little bit contradictory to do that. So maybe have some patience, slow down, and listen thoughtfully. And that connects to the second action, reflect intentionally. This is one of the reasons why we create the growth guide, and so many of you are subscribed to growth guide. So I hope that's adding value to you.
Alex Judd:
It's cool to see how people are using this, especially in their offices. But this is just a compilation of all of the principles, the resources, the questions, the content, that we review in these episodes, and we wanted to put it in a PDF format so that you could review it on a recurring basis. If you wanna get that growth guide, just make sure you sign up in the show notes of this episode. So we said we're gonna listen thoughtfully, we're gonna reflect intentionally, and then we're gonna discuss openly. We say this all the time, healthy growth never occurs in isolation.
Alex Judd:
It always involves relationship. And, man, I'm gonna tell the story here in an upcoming episode of, like, there was a season in my life where the the time that I mostly need patients coincide directly with someone else that I was working with at the time. And it was like, man, there were times where it's like, I really need to talk to him, and he would encourage me be patient. And then, like, he would come talk to me, like, a week later, and I would encourage him. I'm like, hey, man.
Alex Judd:
Be patient. And, man, god can use our relationships to really help us tolerate the pain, continue moving forward, and ultimately make an impact. So I wanna make sure you take those actions. Subscribe, listen thoughtfully, reflect intentionally, and discuss openly. I've got some application questions for you to think about and maybe even for you to discuss with the people on your team or your colleagues or your friends as you go through this first episode and prepare for this series on the non negotiable price of impact.
Alex Judd:
Number one, what's an area of your life or leadership that is requiring patience in this season? Number two, what's the pain, hardship, or challenge associated with that need to be patient? And number three, what is the opportunity for impact you are hoping, waiting, and working for? Those are gonna be such powerful questions for you to think about prior to engaging with these series, so make sure you take those seriously. Maybe write down your answers.
Alex Judd:
And also, if you wanna review those, like we already said, make sure you download the growth guide and link to that is available in the show notes. Y'all, I'm so excited about this series. I've been working really hard on this content, and my prayer is that it blesses you with the ability to endure, the ability to move forward, the ability to grow and serve and ultimately create an impact that loves people and glorifies God. Y'all know this. We're rooting for you.
Alex Judd:
We're praying for you. We wanna see you win. Remember, my strength is not for me. Your strength is not for you. Our strength is for service.
