The Reality Of Losing Your First Million… And Making It Out More Alive Than Ever
….. The down started in November, gave a big ol’ high five in December and drug itself straight into 2025. It reminds me of the moment the roller coaster has reached the top of the peak and there is that moment in time when everything stands still. Suddenly, the cart races to the bottom, if you’re lucky straight into a corkscrew, and if even more lucky an upside-down loop. All of that to say, even if you know the offset is coming – it never, ever feels less scary. Even if you know it will come. Even if you have planned it. Everything comes into question. Fear and anxiety set in. The discomfort seems unbearable, and you yearn for the day when everything was just simpler! – CTE Logistics, April 3, 2025
Aaaaaaand. That is where we left off – exactly, ONE YEAR AGO TODAY. We were excited so many of you subscribed to our newsletter – we didn’t want to overwhelm you with content – we know your inbox is full! So, we made the creative decision to just post once a year – on April 3rd!… here we are today with an update and as the headline suggests – the last 12 months did not disappoint on the uncertainty meter. We did in fact lose our first million. And we are in fact…still alive to tell you all about it! In business circles you always hear things like, “making your first 100k, 500k, 1 million is the hardest…” rarely do people talk about the loses – at least not in real time.
So many factors played into the last year – we had large accounts shrink and move back to their own facilities, we had clients using Seattle ports, diversify into other areas of the country. Freight movement was down industry wide 30+ percent. It seemed that as the rush of the covid era came to a close – everyone was making changes. Thankfully, that type of change goes both ways! We also had the pleasure of meeting and securing some awesome new clients. Clients who are a great fit for us – and hopefully as our amazing team delivers on all of our promises – we are a great fit for them!
Even though it is common knowledge – we always learn more through adversity – it’s still probably the number one thing we all strive to avoid! Riding the wave of success is the absolute best. Sadly, a beautiful life is both equal parts good, and bad. So, let’s break it down: During the last year we focused on four anchors that helped us cope with another roller coaster ride in this unprecedented, turmoil driven crazy life of “what a time to be alive!” Here are the four anchors that grounded us during the last year of massive change!
#1 – Radical Accountability. We are the creators of our experience. We decided very early, how we were going to show up to world during this downturn and season of mass change. It’s pretty easy to show up when the loads are booking and the money is rolling in – BUT – can you anchor in faith, abundance and excellence when the only ink your controller seems to own anymore is red? When things are hard – our amazing brains steps up for double duty to try and protect us from all things bad. It starts to see only the bad, hard things…which leads us to our next belief….
#2 – Continue to focus on all the good. The beauty. The tiny and big miracles. Todd is much better at this than me – as an optimist he sees all the opportunity in the world – myself, as a realist, well I must put in the work on this one. But I will have to admit – early on it was pretty clear the tide coming out was going to expose some things that we could do better – and anytime we can roll out the phrase “learning and growing”, or “streamline and simplify,” – it’s probably my best day ever. There were so many processes we were doing extremely well, and there was exposure to some processes that might have sucked a bit. When your goal is excellence – anytime there was an opportunity to fine tune our systems – well, that was a miracle we could focus on and we did… and are still….
#3 – Handle the emotions. Yes, I know. But hear me out. This is a huge pillar in managing adversity. The emotions you feel when you are losing; are not the same as when you are winning. WE all “know” this. But as a society in general – I believe – this is our favorite thing to push away. Duh. Nobody wants to feel the bad stuff. The fear, the anxiety, the pressure. But guess what. That’s what makes us human – and the harder we try to push them away – well the bigger and scarier they get. So, we slayed that shit. From the get go…we sat in it all. Felt all of it – But we did not let those feeling run the show. Both can be true. Downturns can be scarier than anything you have ever managed, and you can still be a bad ass at slaying red ink all at the same time.
#4 – Team – one our standards and beliefs – we value this in good times and bad, but riding this season of adversity with this crew – made it all 10x better. In the beginning when we were in startup mode and we had to carry the load of ALL THE THINGS. Hands down Todd and I knew from the beginning of the red ink – the BEST THING we had going for us was our TEAM. And we focused on that. WE were not alone in this – every single human here at CTE was showing up and working and always bringing the best version of themselves to the show. Which meant we were way smarter and stronger than we could ever be if it was just Todd and me. One of the many miracles we focused on and the fact that WE were not alone in this experience.
But are you Dead? No! and excitedly more alive than ever! Entering our 17th year we can now confidently say – we feel we have been full circle. As we have said before CTE was born in a recession, we prepared for a downturn and we survived. Did we foresee every pitfall? No way. Were we blindsided in some cases? Absolutely. Were we nimble? You betcha! Did we adapt? Without a doubt. We are stronger than we have ever been, our top ten clients are no longer top heavy or concentrated into a small few. We are more stable – with a well distributed, well aligned top 10. We are more laser focused on who we are and what we excel at – we are lean and mean; everyone on this team is battle tested and ready to continue providing an excellent experience for ourselves, and our clients. We are looking forward to the next chapter of CTE 2.0!
Until next time!
Kimm Lytle