On Experience: Taking the Stairs vs. Earning the Elevator
In your career, you will be offered two paths over and over again: the stairs, or the elevator:
What You Learn by Taking the Stairs
The stairs are slow. Repetitive. Unsexy. They look like failing a sale so badly you replay it in your head for days, then changing one thing the next time. They look like building a business model that makes perfect sense on paper… and then watching reality tear it apart. They look like doing the reps no one sees: the outreach, the drafts, the uncomfortable conversations.
The stairs are where you learn how things actually work. More importantly, they’re where you learn how you work. Because after enough steps, something shifts: You build instincts. You develop judgment. You start to trust yourself. You stop overreacting to every high and low because you’ve lived enough cycles to know: this is part of it.
The stairs don’t just teach you what works. They teach you how to think. And that’s what compounds.
The Value of the Elevator
Then, one day, the elevator shows up: It looks like a call you didn’t expect. A bigger role. A faster path. A seat in a room you haven’t been in before. Suddenly, you’re being pulled up to a level you didn’t climb step-by-step.
Elevators are real. And they’re valuable. They expose you to entirely new challenges, new expectations, new pressure.
But here’s the truth:
If you’ve done the work on the stairs, the elevator feels like expansion. If you haven’t, it feels like exposure.
Same ride. Very different experience.
That’s why you see it happen all the time:
Someone gets the opportunity of a lifetime… and it crushes them. Not because they aren’t smart or capable, but because they haven’t built the muscle yet. They skipped the reps that teach you how to recover. How to adjust in real time. How to trust yourself when things don’t go to plan.
Every new level asks a little more of you.
Just enough to stretch you, not so much that it breaks you.
Finding Your Footing vs. Finding Yourself in a Free Fall
When you’ve done the work on the stairs, that stretch feels right. Challenging, but familiar. You can find your footing. When you haven’t, it feels like free fall.
The stairs are where you build capacity. The elevator is where that capacity gets tested.
The mistake isn’t taking the elevator. It’s taking it before you’re ready, or avoiding it when you are.
How to Know if You should Take the Stairs or Ride the Elevator?
The real skill is knowing which one you need right now. Ask yourself:
Am I avoiding the stairs because they’re hard—or because I’ve outgrown them?
Have I put in enough reps to trust myself under pressure?
Do I understand why things work, or just that they worked once?
Will this next step stretch me or expose me?
Am I chasing speed, or building strength?
Take the stairs long enough, and the elevator won’t scare you. It’ll just take you higher.
