Don't choose the right answer. Make your choice the right one.

Every time the year begins, I set a goal, telling myself that this will be the year.

I write it in my planner. I declare it to someone.

I do it reasonably well. I'm not slacking off.

If anything, I'm running. Yet, when I suddenly stop, I notice something strange. I don't feel like I'm making any progress.

In terms of a staircase, it's a landing. I am climbing. I can see the next step. But right now, I'm standing on a flat surface, moving neither forward nor backward. I'm sure many people know exactly what this feels like.

Why does this happen?

Many people are looking for the "right path" on the landing. Which step should I climb to get the right answer? Is this choice correct? I don't want to make a mistake. I don't want to fail. So, I cautiously check my footing. And while I'm searching, I haven't climbed a single step.

The act of searching for the right answer itself is the biggest obstacle. This is the true nature of the landing.

There is no such thing as a right path anywhere.

There is no right answer to the path.

Business management is often compared to mountain climbing. You decide on the summit you are aiming for, devise a strategy on who to climb with and how, make a plan, gather people, goods, and money, and execute it. It's a pretty story. But this metaphor has a continuation that no one talks about.

There is no right answer to the mountain you climb. There is no right answer to the route, either.

There are countless mountains in the world. There are many routes up the same mountain. A path that is "only here is correct" does not exist anywhere. So, what are business owners—no, what is every person who tries to choose something doing?

They are making the mountain they chose, and the route they chose, the right answer with their own hands.

If you chose the shortest course, use that speed as your weapon. If you dared to choose a steep path, climb it to the end and turn it into meaning. You don't choose the right path. You make the path you chose right. This is the only way to get off the landing.

I write this as if I understand it perfectly, but I didn't learn this from reading a book. I chose a mountain with my own feet, tumbled down once, and climbed down a mountain I had once climbed myself. Through all of that, I learned it to a painful degree.

Thirty-one years old, a penniless start

When I was thirty-one, I chose my first mountain with nothing to my name. I wasn't made to choose it. I threw myself into it on my own.

I just couldn't get along with the management policy of my previous job. The more I tried to reconcile, the deeper the rift became, and in the end, we clashed, and I left the company in what was practically a falling out. Moreover, I didn't just leave. I left by taking over one of the stores from my previous job, almost by force.

Looking back now, it was the height of poor planning. It wasn't that I had capital, nor had I calculated the odds of success. All I had was the feeling that I would do it, and my youth. It was the ultimate example of youthful folly.

However, I truly believe that what I did was for the best. I couldn't have done it if I hadn't been that age, with that lack of foresight. If I had been old enough to calculate the risks, I surely wouldn't have moved an inch. But that recklessness became an experience that paid off later.

There was, of course, a price to pay. People said all sorts of things, true or false, and I had obstacles thrown in my path wherever I went. Since I had forced my way into taking over the shop, that was to be expected. Having left of my own volition, I had no right to complain. Still, it took its toll. I had no money to begin with. I had no reputation and no backing. All I had was the experience I'd gained on the front lines and a baseless conviction that I would make it work.

Even so, I chose it. No, the moment I left, I had already chosen.

And this fact was what drove me.
I took over the shop. I went independent. There was no turning back.
This single point pushed me harder than any business plan ever could. I didn't move because I felt motivated.

I had placed myself in a position where it would be the end if I didn't move. So I moved. Instead of waiting for motivation or resolve to well up, if you cut off your retreat first, action will follow.

What I did was simple. I worked. No days off, no breaks. That said, I don't intend to turn this into a sob story. Every time I was cornered by a lack of money or heard rumors about myself, I couldn't help but wonder if I had made a mistake.

I wasn't able to keep going because I was strong. I had no choice but to keep going. That is the truth of it.
However, I knew that just being reckless would eventually lead to burnout.

That is why I took the experience I had gained on the front lines and organized it into words, one by one. Why did that sales method work? What kind of approach made customers take action? I transformed accidental successes into a format that anyone could replicate. In other words, I created a sales model.

And I focused thoroughly on the customers alone. What my competitors were doing or what people from my previous job were saying didn't matter at all. What does the person right in front of me need? I thought only about that and kept responding to it.

As I did this, the numbers began to move. 150% compared to the previous year. Eventually 200%.
That was enough of a response to the people who had been saying this and that. There was no need to argue back. The results silenced them on their own.

At this moment, I understood something deep down. It wasn't that things went well because going independent was the "right" choice. The conditions were the worst, and it was a decision that looked like a mistake from every angle. Even so, because I worked like hell after making that choice, it became the "right" choice as a result. That is all.

You don't choose it because it's the right answer. You make it the right answer after you choose it.

However, humans are weak. Once you win, you neatly forget this order. What awaited me next was a pitfall far more dangerous than independence. And it came in the form of success, not failure.

The downfall brought on by "success"

As sales grew, people started reaching out from the outside. Through business partners and acquaintances, offers to open new locations came one after another. That place is vacant, it's a great deal, you should definitely take it.

I didn't feel bad about it. In fact, I felt good. I accepted them as requested without a second thought. Even though I didn't have enough staff. Even though I wasn't prepared. At that time, I couldn't see a single reason to refuse.

Strangely, I didn't feel afraid. What came first was momentum.

People around me flattered me. Amazing, you're something else, keep it up, they said. No one stopped me. The fact that there was no one to stop me seemed like a blessing at first, but it was actually the most dangerous thing. I couldn't see myself being flattered.

The results showed honestly in the numbers.

The number of shops increased. The total sales increased. But profits were shrinking. As I spread myself too thin, I couldn't keep track of everything, and cracks appeared everywhere at once. Before I knew it, even paying the employees' salaries was in jeopardy. I was scraping by at the end of the month with loans. Such months continued.

At that moment, I finally understood. I hadn't chosen the mountain.

I had simply ridden the momentum of the route that came my way. I had told people that 'just walking along and ending up on top of a mountain' was something that would never happen. Yet, I was the one who had been climbing that way. I thought I had chosen, but I was just being swept along.

Those who stop at the landing and those who rush in and collapse—they may seem like opposites, but the ailment is the same. Neither of them chose for themselves.

There are no shortcuts to rebuilding.

So, how did I rebuild?

There was no single stroke of luck to turn things around. No opening of a popular brand store, no miraculous recovery move. What I did was purely mundane work.

The first thing I started was creating a space to talk face-to-face with each staff member once a month. What we call 1-on-1s today. I didn't know such a fancy term back then, but I made sure to set aside time to properly listen to each person. What were they struggling with? What did they want to do? I had been looking only at increasing the number of stores and hadn't been looking at the people who mattered most. That reflection was my starting point.

Trying it out, I realized this was good training for drawing out a person's true feelings. The things they really think, hidden behind their formal stance. The ability to draw that out is something I use directly in my current work as a consultant, facing business owners one-on-one.

From there, I organized a communication system to connect the stores and created internal systems, like research activities where we could bring back what we learned. It was the work of rebuilding what had collapsed, piece by piece, by hand.

It's almost embarrassing how mundane this sounds. But there was something important hidden here.

When you hear 'make your choice the right one,' you might think of exciting ideas like steeling your resolve or pushing through with sheer willpower. That's wrong. Making it the right one is the work of creating mundane systems one by one. Things that collapsed due to momentum cannot be restored by momentum. You have no choice but to rebuild it one step at a time.

The mountain I had been swept along and collapsed on, I now chose to climb again with my own hands. That is how the business gradually recovered.

And this 'rebuilding' would later help me in ways I never imagined.

Descending the mountain I climbed, of my own volition

When the business settled down, I started studying to become a Small and Medium Enterprise Management Consultant.

The reason was simple. My own management style had been too self-taught. I increased stores on momentum and was tripped up by that same momentum. At that time, I had nothing to stand on. I didn't want to fall the same way again. It was meant to be a defensive move.

After getting the qualification and starting to look at other people's companies from that position, I realized something.

This job is not just about selling things.

It happened when I was involved in the management improvement of an apparel store. Their cash flow was blocked, and they had no choice but to close the store if things continued as they were. I set up a rescheduling of repayments, rebuilt the numbers one by one, and worked with them to create a plan for how to continue. It was a series of mundane tasks. But because of that, the store survived. And as long as it survived, the lives of the people working there and their families continued as well.

Behind the numbers, there are always people. There is the business owner, the employees, and their families. Whether a single store remains or not is directly linked to the lives of everyone involved. When that store recovered, I felt that I hadn't just increased sales, but had saved a person's life.

That didn't feel like someone else's problem to me.

I expanded on impulse and caused the shop to tilt. Cash flow was tight, and I scraped by at the end of the month with loans. The turnaround plan was something I had once done desperately myself. The sales style I created at my own shop and the attitude of focusing solely on the customer were things I could use just as they were at someone else's shop.

I remember that feeling in my body. There aren't many consultants with management experience. Perhaps that's why. I don't offer armchair theories; I can sit next to them as someone who has fallen into the same hole. Before I knew it, I was being relied upon. The qualification I had taken for protection was turning into a mountain I wanted to climb.

Around the same time, changes were happening at my feet as well. There were more days when I wasn't on the shop floor.

The shop was running even without me. I could go out whenever I wanted. I had time. Since then, I had quietly trained staff and rebuilt the systems. That accumulation had, before I knew it, created a workplace where I wasn't needed.

It collapsed because there were no people. It can move on to the next stage because people have grown.

The tedious work that seemed like a detour was all connected to this. I decided before I turned forty. I will descend this mountain.

It would be a lie to say I wasn't scared. My executive compensation would become zero. The mountain I had climbed until now had its own rewards. I was going to reduce that to zero with my own hands. There were no guarantees for the next mountain. That feeling from when I was thirty-one had returned in a different form.

However, there is only one thing different from back then.

At thirty-one, I crashed and jumped out on my own. At forty, I stepped down from a profitable mountain of my own volition. Neither was a choice decided by someone else. I chose it myself, paid the price myself, and made it the right answer myself.

I didn't choose it because being a consultant was the 'right path.' I didn't know how it would turn out. Even so, if I chose it, I would make it the right answer. Even descending the mountain, I could just make it the right answer after I had descended.

When I steeled myself like that, the fear of becoming zero turned into resolve.

Today, make one choice.

I went independent, expanded, collapsed, rebuilt, and descended. A person who has experienced all of that is now, as a consultant, supporting others in their mountain climbing from the side. It was a path full of detours, but looking back, not a single thing was wasted.

I have been telling you the story of my three mountains.

The independence where I crashed and jumped out. The expansion where I was swept away and collapsed. The restart where I stepped down from a profitable mountain myself. There was no guarantee of a right answer at the time for any of those choices. Looking at the conditions, they were all things people would tell me to stop. Even so, I chose, I moved, and I made them the right answers afterward.

I didn't choose the right path. I made the path I chose the right one.

The reason your feet stop at a landing is usually because you are doing the opposite. You are only checking your feet to see which is the right path. But there is no right path anywhere. All there is, is the path you make right after you choose it. The moment you stop searching and choose, the landing turns into a passing point.

It doesn't have to be a big decision. Today, choose one thing. Write it on paper and stick it where you can see it. Tell someone. From the moment you say it out loud, that choice begins to pull you forward.

You don't need to know if it's right now. It is the future you who will make it right. If I could say one thing to my thirty-one-year-old self, I would say this: Keep going as you are. Don't worry. Everything leads to growth.

Now, which mountain will you choose?