CHOOSE HARD — One Year at Moore Water

t’s hard to believe but today it’s been one year since I started selling water filtration systems at Moore Water.

I had never had a sales job before.

During training week, I was warned that it was going to be hard. There were something like forty pages of script to memorize, and we had to know it.

My response was basically twofold. First: Awesome! For as long as I can remember, I’ve always embraced difficult things. I love a good challenge. Second: I’m great at memorizing.

The first statement turned out to be true. The second needed some qualification.

I was great at memorizing. But I’m older now. Memory does not work quite as well as it once did. And I suspect something else has happened too: I have allowed the memory muscle itself to weaken.

Why memorize something when the answer is always sitting in your pocket? Names. Phone numbers. Directions. Facts. Quotations. Dates. Definitions. Everything at the touch of my fingertips.

For most of human history, if you wanted to possess something intellectually, you had to put it inside yourself. Now we outsource an enormous amount of our memory to a little machine we carry with us. Everywhere. 24/7.

During training week, I discovered just how much that faculty had atrophied.

It was hard. REALLY hard. But I got through it…barely.

At the end of training, my boss (coach is a far better word for what he has been to me) gave me another warning. The job itself was hard, and he thought it might be especially hard for me. I vividly remember him telling me, “Closing is going to be a challenge for you.” And boy was he right.

THE MATHEMATICS OF REJECTION

Think about what this job requires. I walk into the home of someone I have never met before...almost always. I test the water. I explain what’s in it and what can be done about it. Then, during that same visit, I ask the homeowner to make a decision about purchasing a whole-home water system that costs more than $10,000.

One visit. Ten thousand dollars. Close the deal. For someone who had never sold anything professionally in his life, that is hard.

There are plenty of other uncertainties. I don’t know who will answer the door. I don’t know whether the people will be friendly or hostile, interested or skeptical. I don’t know whether they will want to understand their water or rush me through everything and demand a price before I have explained what I’m even offering.

For a lot of people, that would probably be the hardest part of the job. Strangely, it is not for me.

I actually like it. I like meeting new people every day. I like walking into an environment I have never seen. I like not knowing exactly what is going to happen. I am not always comfortable with the unknown, but the newness of every appointment appeals to me. And once I pass the threshold of entering the home and actually meeting the homeowners face-to-face, I love it.

The hard part comes at the end. They can say no. And I hate failure.

I mean that quite literally. I despise failure. For most of my life, something deep inside me has operated according to a simple rule: I will not fail. I do not fail. Period.

Sales is a terrible profession for someone who believes that, because failure is built into the mathematics of the job.

I am expected to close about one out of every three appointments: thirty-three percent. If I am doing my job successfully, most people still tell me no. Two-thirds of the time, rejection is not proof that something has gone terribly wrong. It is simply part of the work.

My instincts do not experience it that way. No feels like failure. An appointment without a sale feels like failure. A bad week feels like failure.

Then there is another scoreboard beyond the individual appointment. I am expected to maintain that closing percentage. Fall below it for two consecutive months and, at least on paper, I should lose my job.

I have fallen below it. More than once. There have been stretches when I have not even been close. A couple months I’ve even fallen into the teens.

My coach has been extraordinarily gracious. He has seen something beyond the number: my willingness to learn, my desire to improve, and my willingness to be coached.

And so I have been allowed to keep going. Which means I have also been allowed to keep failing.

WHAT THE TRAIL TAUGHT ME

That sentence would have horrified me at another point in my life. But I had already begun learning this lesson somewhere else: on the trail.

I did not start running seriously until I was nearly fifty. When I began entering races, I had to confront something that should have been obvious: I was not going to win them.

There are remarkable exceptions. Someone like Jeff Browning can still compete at an extraordinary level around my age, but he has spent decades becoming that athlete. I had not. I was not even in particularly good shape when I started. Actually, I was in terrible shape.

Running forced me to confront a category I had resisted most of my life: doing something I knew I probably could not win.

At first, that felt like accepting failure before I even began. Eventually, ultrarunning began teaching me that I had misunderstood failure.

The person ahead of me was not necessarily the measure of my success. Finishing mattered. Going farther than I had gone before mattered. Attempting something I was not sure I could finish mattered. Even a DNF could teach me something I needed for the next attempt.

What I had been calling failure could sometimes be a step in the direction of becoming.

Sales has been teaching me the same lesson much more painfully. Every “no” does not mean I failed. Every bad month does not mean the previous month was wasted. Even genuine failure does not have to be the opposite of progress. Sometimes failure is the material from which progress is made.

That does not mean I have learned to like it. I still hate failure. Maybe that matters too. Choosing hard does not mean pretending hard things are not hard. Courage does not require enjoying fear. Nor does perseverance require the enjoyment of suffering.

Learning from failure does not require learning to love failure. The real question is: What do I do after I “fail”?

Do I retreat to something that I already know I’m good at? Do I protect my ego by refusing to attempt things I might not be good at? Do I interpret every rejection as proof that I should not be doing this?

Or do I learn? Do I listen? Do I accept correction? Do I remain coachable? Do I get up and walk into the next house?

That is where humility enters the story. Humility is not thinking I am terrible at everything. It is becoming willing to discover that I am not as good at something as I thought I would be…and remaining there long enough to be taught.

THE HARD THING WITHOUT A FINISH LINE

This past year has been a roller coaster. There have been stretches with no sales at all, times when I wondered whether I was capable of doing this, and times when I SERIOUSLY considered quitting.

Then suddenly I would sell one. Then another. Maybe a few. I would think: Okay. Maybe I am finally getting this.

But then, soon thereafter…another drought.

Up. Down. Up. Down. For an entire year.

Despite the occasional highs, if I step back and look objectively at what I earned over the past twelve months, the number is abysmal.

That matters, because “Choose Hard” can very easily become a slogan. It can become the kind of thing we print on a T-shirt while conveniently choosing hard things that we already know we can conquer.

Run the race. Lift the weight. Take the cold shower. Wake up early.

Those things really can be good. They really are hard (at least for me, they are!).

But there is another kind of hard: the hard thing you are not naturally good at; the hard thing that humiliates you; the hard thing that does not reward you immediately; the hard thing where, after a year of effort, you cannot point to the scoreboard and declare victory.

Then there is the hardest part: the consequences of failure do not remain neatly contained within the challenge. They come home with you.

When your income is terrible, your family experiences it too. Bills are still bills. Gas still costs money. Groceries still cost money.

Eventually the financial reality became difficult enough that I started delivering packages for Amazon in the mornings. Initially, the reason was brutally practical: I needed money for gas so I could afford all the driving required to keep doing the other job.

There is something almost comical about that. I took a second job partly so I could afford to drive to my first job.

But there was another reason I chose Amazon.

Morning.

IDENTITY OR ACCUMULATED HABIT?

I have been a night owl for as long as I can remember. I do not like getting up early. No, I despise it. I have struggled with mornings for most of my life.

But I also know something important: I can do it.

Years ago I worked at UPS loading and unloading trailers. For more than a year, I had to show up somewhere between 3:30 and 4:30 in the morning.

So when I say, “I am not a morning person,” what exactly do I mean? That mornings are difficult for me? Absolutely. That getting out of bed early feels unnatural? Yes. But that I cannot do it? That is not true. I have already proved that to be false.

Even taking the Amazon job became, in a strange way, another experiment in choosing hard. Yes, I needed the money. Yes, I needed the gas. But I also deliberately began taking early-morning shifts because I wanted to confront something I had struggled with for decades.

Get up. Do the thing I do not want to do. Do it again tomorrow. And the next day.

Perhaps, eventually, what once required enormous effort begins to become a habit. Maybe I go to bed earlier. Maybe I stop treating “night owl” as an identity and start treating it simply as a tendency.

Maybe some of the things I have spent years saying I am are really just things I have repeatedly practiced.

WHAT IS THIS STRUGGLE MAKING OF ME?

That may be one of the largest lessons of this strange year. I started the year thinking “Choose Hard” meant that I liked challenges. A year later, I think it means something more.

It is easy to choose a hard thing when the hard thing makes you feel heroic. It is way harder when it makes you feel incompetent.

It is easy to choose hard when you can see progress. It is way harder when you wonder whether you are getting anywhere.

It is easy to choose hard when there is a finish line. It is way harder when you wake up and discover that today you are simply supposed to do it again. And again. And again.

Maybe that is where formation actually happens. Not in the dramatic moment when we decide to do something difficult, but in the hundreds of ordinary moments after the decision. Precisely when we discover that it is so much harder than we could have imagined. And most importantly, we choose not to run away.

That is the distinction at the heart of Podvig Academy. “Choose Hard” cannot merely mean choosing difficult experiences. It means choosing difficulty for the sake of formation.

The goal is not pain. The goal is not proving that I am tougher than someone else. The goal is not collecting impressive accomplishments. The question is: What is this struggle teaching me? What is it making of me?

This year has taught me a ton. And it has reshaped me in ways I could never have fathomed. Memorization has exposed an atrophied faculty. Sales has exposed my relationship with failure. Rejection has attacked pride. Coaching has required humility. Financial difficulty has tested perseverance. Amazon has confronted a decades-old habit around mornings. Ultrarunning has taught me to redefine success.

None of those struggles is valuable merely because it hurts. They become valuable insofar as I allow them to form me.

I do not know yet what the final verdict on this year will be. I do not know whether selling water filtration will eventually become something I am genuinely good at. I do not know whether I will look back on this as the difficult apprenticeship that taught me how to sell, or simply as a difficult season that taught me something else entirely.

The story is not finished.

Maybe that is precisely why I should write it now. Podvig cannot merely be about choosing hard things after we already know how the story ends.

I am not founding Podvig Academy because I have mastered the hard life. I am founding it because I have become convinced that the struggle is necessary…and I need it too.

Podvig is the struggle itself.

Today I have been selling water filtration for one year. It has been harder than I expected. I have wanted to quit. I have failed repeatedly. I have discovered things about myself that I would have preferred to avoid.

I am still learning. I am still struggling.

And tomorrow morning, the alarm will go off…really early.

Get up.

Choose hard.

Again.

WHERE THIS FITS

This “One Year at Moore Water” is an essay from The Gymnasium, Podvig Academy’s path of formation for body, mind, and soul. It is also the recommended starting point for the opening Podvig essays. Continue with “The Lord Directs His Steps,” which looks backward at the unlikely road that led here and begins to explore the meaning of podvig itself.