Don't forget the pandemic. In every well-laid plan, no matter how carefully orchestrated,

there comes a moment when things fall apart. It doesn't matter how organized, methodical, or well-prepared

you are. At some point, the gears grind, the system breaks, and you find yourself in chaos.

It could happen at the beginning of a project, the middle, or right near the finish line, but it's going to happen.

I've talked about this idea a lot, how everything breaks at some

point and how you need a certain kind of person to handle the fallout when it does. It's not

a matter of if it will break. It's when. What I didn't expect was to see this idea hit everyone all at once

across the entire world when the pandemic hit in 2020. Before we get to that, let me take you back to a conversation I had in my backyard

office, a shipping container I'd turned into a workspace. My friend Stephen was hanging out with me that day.

Stephen is one of those people I love talking to about my work because like me, he's got a

DIY background.

But unlike me, Stephen spent a good chunk of his life working for Amazon, a company that on the

surface seems like the ultimate in professional

organization, process-driven, and meticulously planned.

Stephan had all the inside stories about Amazon, the wild pivots, Christmas deadlines, the

impossible scenario behind the scenes chaos that shaped the company.

Despite its reputation for being a hyper-efficient machine, Amazon, like everything else, had its share of battles and

scrappy moments.

Stephan understood that, and that's why we connected.

He gets the messy side of things, even in the most polished organizations.

We were talking about all this one day.

When the pandemic was just starting to shut the world down, we were watching the chaos unfold and I remember

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