“You can't build a great building on a weak foundation.”

-Gordon B. Hinckley

I still remember the sound like it was yesterday.

It was 2014, and I was working at DataSift, a fast-growing, big data startup. Our office was in the heart of San Francisco's SoMa district on 1st & Mission. We had a great product, hot market, and a talented team. Every morning I'd walk into that office with the buzz of energy and excitement. Company swag. Catered lunches. Team building off-sites. These were the good times and we all knew it. Our CEO even went on CNBC to talk about going public.

One day, while mid-sentence in a conference room with a prospective client, we began to hear a loud, an annoying sound from across the street.

Dooooong. Dooooong. Dooooong.

It was inescapable. It kept going for 20 or 30 mins.

And it came back the next day. And the next. And the next.

It lasted for several months.

Every day, like clockwork around 2pm.

Dooooong. Dooooong. Dooooong.

It turns out that the old parking garage across the street from our office had been demolished and construction crews had dug a 50+ foot deep hole into the ground. They were driving stakes into the ground. Deep into the ground. Those stakes being driven into the ground, day after day, were the beginning of something that would eventually become the Salesforce Tower.

Today it stands at 1,070 feet, the tallest building on the West Coast.

But before a single floor could go up, they had to spend months driving stakes into the ground. Building something invisible. Building something nobody would ever see or photograph or celebrate.

The foundation goes 310 feet below grade, with rock sockets extending an additional 70 feet into bedrock; making it the deepest foundations ever built in San Francisco.

That means roughly 29% of the building's total height exists underground — invisible, uncelebrated, and entirely load-bearing.

Nearly a third of what makes the Salesforce Tower possible is something nobody ever sees or photographs.

Our careers, meaning how much value we can create and capture in the economy, works exactly the same way.

The higher we climb, the bigger the role, the larger the responsibility, the more visible we become, the stronger the winds get. The stakes increase. The pressure compounds. And if our foundation wasn't built to match the height we're reaching for, the structure starts to sway.

The Salesforce Tower wasn't just engineered to be tall. It was engineered to withstand everything that comes with being tall.

This is why certain people plateau and why others continue to build.

It's not an intelligence problem.

It's not a work ethic problem.

It's a foundation problem.

There are three pillars that determine how high we can go.

Mindset

This is our psychology — the beliefs we hold about ourselves, our capabilities, and what's possible for our lives. The stories we tell ourselves when things get hard. The internal voice that either says I can figure this out or people like me don't succeed at things like this.

Look at any elite performer and you'll find a relentless, almost unreasonable belief in their own capacity. Michael Jordan didn't just practice more than everyone else — he believed more than everyone else. Elon Musk doesn't just have resources; he operates with a mindset that treats seemingly impossible problems as engineering challenges to be solved. Sheryl Sandberg didn't just work hard; she believed she belonged in rooms that hadn't historically welcomed people who looked like her.

Mindset isn't soft. It's structural. A cracked belief system — one rooted in scarcity, fear, or the need to prove something — will fail under pressure the same way a compromised foundation buckles under load.

Habits

Habits are what we do every day; especially when no one is watching, and especially when we don't feel like it. How we spend our mornings. Whether we move our bodies. How we manage our time and our money. Whether we're reading, learning, growing, or consuming, numbing, and doomscrolling.

Steph Curry didn't become the greatest shooter in NBA history by accident. He became it through habits — specific, daily, deliberate practice that he showed up for when he was tired, when he was hurt, when he'd rather have been doing something else. The habits preceded the greatness. They always do.

Skills

Skills are what we can learn over time with effort and intentional practice. Computer programming. Storytelling. Sales. Data analysis. Public speaking. Fundraising. Creative writing. These are not gifts we either have or don't. They are capacities we build through repetition, feedback, and the willingness to be bad at something long enough to become good at it.

The economy rewards skill. Not degrees or credentials. Not titles. Not potential. Demonstrated, marketable skills.

Mindset. Habits. Skills. These are the stakes being driven into the ground. These are the things no one can take away from us.

This is the foundation that determines how high we can go.

What’s this have to do with courage?

Courage is the rebar that connects and reinforces all three pillars.

It takes courage to interrogate our mindset; to sit with our limiting beliefs and ask honestly where they came from and whether they're actually true. That's intellectual courage, and most of us avoid it because the answers can be uncomfortable. It's far easier to keep moving fast than to stop and ask whether we're moving in the right direction for the right reasons.

It takes courage to build new habits and release old ones. It takes courage to say no to the old patterns, to disappoint the version of ourselves that wants comfort and ease, to show up for the people we're trying to become before we feel like those people yet.

It takes courage to develop new skills, especially the high-income ones like sales, fundraising, and public speaking. The skills that change our economic trajectory the most are almost always the ones that carry the highest risk of rejection and embarrassment. Fear of judgment keeps more of us stuck than lack of intelligence ever will.

Right now, hundreds of thousands of professionals are navigating the earthquakes and high winds of layoffs; some of the most sweeping in recent history. 2020 Presidential candidate Andrew Yang calls it the “the fuckening.” If that's you, or someone you love, just know that I’m rooting for you. Regardless of all the uncertainty ahead and variables you can’t control, you can always focus on your foundation.

We can always fortify and retrofit our foundations so that we can rise higher than before.

Mindset. Habits. Skills. All held together by courage.

The parking lot can become a tower. The layoff can become a launchpad.

But only if we're willing to drive the stakes.

Here's your reflection for the week:

How strong is your foundation? Think about your mindset, habits and skills.

What area would benefit the most from strengthening it?

Here's your challenge for the week:

Identify ONE thing you can do to strengthen your foundation. Take action on ONE task. Need accountability? Email me. I’d love to hear from you. I read every reply.

With courage,

Jonathan