Rather than advance an inch, it is better to retreat a yard

“The generals have a saying:

‘Rather than make the first move,

it is better to wait and see.

Rather than advance an inch,

it is better to retreat a yard.’” ¹

How often do we grind away at our careers or in our lives, pushing and forcing, just to advance an inch?

We work for 2 years for a promotion from associate to manager. We grind for 9 months to raise our salary by $5 an hour. We post every day on social media for a year just to get 10 likes versus 5. This is small thinking. This is advancing an inch.

When we only chase incremental improvement, we never quantum leap into a higher timeline. We stay stuck on the same track. We never 10x. Our nose is too close to the paper. We can’t see the whole picture. We can’t zoom out, reorient ourselves, and choose a new path, devise a new strategy, or approach our situation from a higher perspective that would leapfrog us 10 steps forward in ½ the time.

Oftentimes, what precedes a quantum leap or a 100- to 1,000x increase is an intentional step back. It is retreating a yard, rather than advancing an inch. It’s rare for someone to consciously retreat because doing so means taking a hit in status, security, and identity.

But those who can summon the wisdom and courage to take the status hit, the salary cut, the job loss, the time offline, and can bear a period of stagnancy, uncertainty, and confusion, go on to create far better results than those who spend their entire lives advancing only an inch.

“Victory will go,

to the one that knows how to yield.” ²

When Jeff Bezos left his high-status, high-salary finance job in New York City to create Amazon from his kitchen table, he retreated a yard, but eventually moved thousands of yards ahead of everyone else who stayed on the finance track.

When Matthew McConaughey left law school and then paused his new career in acting to spend six months motorbiking through Europe, he retreated a yard, only to return to the US fully ready to step into his purpose and move thousands of yards ahead in his acting career.

When Michael Jordan retired from the NBA in 1993 after 3 straight championships to play baseball, he retreated a yard, allowing his passion for basketball to reignite, and returned hungrier and more focused than ever to win 3 more straight championships from 1996 to 1998.

These three figures achieved results that were quantum leaps above others in their industry. How? They had the courage to step back, climb back down the mountain, and start again with more clarity, determination, and conviction than ever before. The greatest leaps in history were made from a conscious step back.

When I was 20, I chose to step away from football, change my major from economics to psychology, and travel Europe (after being inspired by McConaughey) instead of doing another finance internship.

I could have kept inching forward with football, maybe squeezing out a little playing time by my fourth year, and inching forward on the finance path, getting another internship that would have set me up for a well-paying job after college.

Instead, I took a status hit in both areas, wandered Europe for 6 weeks with no plan, and realized I wanted to write online as a career rather than work in a corporate office. That step back led to a quantum leap forward, where I left school 6 months later to become a full-time creator and ghostwriter and never stepped foot into a 9-5 job for a single day.

Almost a year later, in 2023, after my first digital nomad sprint in Argentina and Costa Rica, I decided to move back home with my parents to lock in and build for 3 months.

In those 3 months, I built and launched my first cohort and made $23,000, which propelled me to move to Austin, Texas, where I met friends who changed my life forever. I also iterated the previous cohort into another launch that did $40,000, which allowed me to take 3 months off to backpack Thailand. The origin of those leaps forward was a conscious retreat back home.

Over the past few years, I have taken multiple steps back to eventually make quantum leaps forward.

I cut my ghostwriting income down to zero to build my own thing from scratch. I left my high-status, well-paying jobs with Aubrey Marcus and Dan Koe because I felt like I was living one standard deviation away from my purpose. I even left the creator economy to wander around Thailand for 3 months because I was burnt out and misaligned, seeking presence and a deeper connection with my spiritual self.

Each time, the moves didn’t make sense to those around me. They killed my ego and shattered my sense of identity.

Imagine dropping out of a top 10 university, cutting $7,000/month of income, leaving secure jobs with high-profile people in the space, and pausing a business that just did $40,000 in a month to wander around Thailand with a backpack.

On the surface, these moves are pretty ridiculous. My parents didn’t understand or necessarily approve (although they have always supported me).

But a small voice inside me, a subtle feeling in my spirit, told me something was off — and I am not the type of person who can continue inching forward in roles or trajectories that are not 100% aligned for more than a few weeks or months.

I have always prioritized my spirit, my intuition, and alignment with my purpose over external benchmarks of status, security, or success — which is why I have continued to backtrack my progress to come into deeper alignment with myself.

More recently, I have once again retreated.

I significantly cut my responsibilities and income in my friend Nick Sweeney’s Coherent Creators program to put full energy into my own thing (I am still leading a class a week because I love the people inside and being a teacher). I moved back home from Bali to be with family for a month before a summer of heavy travel to lock in and build the foundation of my next few projects. I also just cut $1,000/month in income from a mid-ticket program to build a high-ticket, more personalized offer (the origin of this article idea).

Why? To iterate closer to absolute alignment with my purpose and set myself up for more ownership, more leveraged containers, and quantum leaps in business in the future.

“The path into the light seems dark,

the path forward seems to go back.” ³

Yesterday, with one of my 1:1 clients, Jack, we spent about 45 minutes restructuring his business model.

Jack’s doing about $10-$15k a month in his health coaching business, but he’s on calls for 20+ hours a week and works over 50 hours a week just to stay on top of everything.

We realized that by reducing his 4 pricing tiers to 2, taking bi-weekly calls only, and building better systems for his community and hiring as assistant, he could grow his revenue from $10-15k to $35-40k/month and be on calls for 10 hours a week instead of 20.

This way, he’s serving more people, has more time back to create content, serve his clients asynchronously, and live his life, and makes 2.5x the revenue in ½ the time.

The meta-principle here?

By stepping back, getting his head out of the day-to-day operations, and thinking strategically about how to move forward, we set up a game plan to quantum-leap his business and his quality of life.

He could have kept inching away in his current model by taking on more work and signing more clients, but instead, just by stepping back for an hour to think strategically, his entire business model became significantly more efficient and profitable.

We are not talking about retreating out of fear, scarcity, and playing small.

We are talking about choosing to step back with calculation and wisdom to chart a better path forward to our ideal destination.

This is the process of choosing a higher timeline:

Get away from the world. Turn off tech. Destimulate from consumption and go inwards. It’s very hard to get clear on where we want to go when we are drowning in work, messages, and responsibilities. If you can, carving out time to go off-grid, offline, and retreat into yourself is a great way to do this. I am attending a friend’s retreat in Colombia, June 10-15, if you are interested in doing the same.

Once you have stepped back from the world, now is the time to zoom out. See your life as a story that is unfolding. Look at where you’ve come from. Sober up to where you are now. See your life from a broader perspective of years or decades rather than only the day-to-day. A good exercise to do this is to ask your older self for advice and perspective. This could be your 5-year older self or 50-year older self. You will always receive wisdom and guidance when you shift into this perspective. This is how you develop your inner coach.

Now that you’ve stepped back and zoomed out, you can visualize the future reality you want to create. What’s important to you? What’s your mission? What’s your ideal lifestyle? What’s your ideal work, career, and income? Most importantly, is the current path you’re on moving you towards this ideal future? If any aspect of it is a no, that is a sign to step back and move forward on an upgraded path with a different strategy. I have a free guided meditation to connect to your 1-year future vision on YouTube here.

Is there one message you know you have to send? Is there a new job to apply for? Is there a project to build? You don’t have to have all the answers right away. Clarity will come once you start moving towards the layer of your vision that you can see. Start moving towards it, no matter how small, and the next steps will reveal themselves as you walk.

How do you not lose sight of your vision? How do you avoid accidentally going onto side paths that distract you from your main quest? You have to make zooming out and gaining perspective a daily practice. Journaling. Meditation. Pondering walks. Deep conversations with intelligent friends. These are crucial to staying oriented towards what you want most.

Hopefully, the examples I used in this article of famous figures and myself have given you the permission and the inspiration to take a step back and reorient towards a higher future, if that is the season of life you are in.

If you already feel 100% aligned and on your mission, don't change anything. All you have to do now is stay connected to it.

But if this did speak to you, and there is a certain area of your life you feel called to retreat from, do so with wisdom and calculation. Don’t make a decision haphazardly, but also don’t delay your decision out of fear. Move with courage and faith towards your vision and continue stepping back and iterating when things feel out of alignment.

No one has to understand your decision but you. You can see your future more clearly than anyone else.

Trust yourself, and move forward from your inner knowing. And remember, the path forward often begins with an intentional step back.

Thanks for reading,

~ Jack

¹ Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, trans. Stephen Mitchell (New York: HarperCollins, 1988), verse 69.

² Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, trans. Stephen Mitchell (New York: HarperCollins, 1988), verse 69.

³ Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, trans. Stephen Mitchell (New York: HarperCollins, 1988), verse 41.