Life is a Cycle – Business is a Pattern – Geoff Bainbridge’s Outlook

Any undergraduate business course from the community college level to a major university in the West will alter an often-heard mentality, one that equates business to life. The entrepreneur must navigate the peaks and valleys while doing the hard work to reap the benefits. It will all pay off in the end, business students are told, as early as grade school. Here, the purpose of instruction is to equate business to life, where overcoming the challenges in one is equitable to doing the same in the other. Geoff Bainbridge knows business – he also knows life – and he views the latter as a pattern while the former is cyclical.

“…the reality is that times are going to get tough”

Unfortunately, Bainbridge has yet to tour the world and change the mentality of these business students stuck in a cycle-like business mentality. The successful entrepreneur and humanistic visionary, however, is more-than-willing to share his success secrets. At a young age, Bainbridge took on entrepreneurship as a hobby, then a practice, and finally a business. Grill’d, which changed the hamburger game for the rest of time, is only one of his countless achievements in the business space. Always one to appreciate collaboration over competition, Bainbridge shares a meaningful and symbolic statement on how business does not replicate life.

“On the business front, the reality is that times are going to get tough, and unlike life, business and markets operate as patterns.” (Geoff Bainbridge)

Life has a starting point and an end put – it goes in a cycle – and while one must navigate the challenges of life there is always motion. Business is a pattern – it can stop at any moment – and a good leader understands the patterns of business, anticipating them to halt the bad and harness the good. Bainbridge argues that “a good leader’s job is to anticipate the tough times and prepare the business accordingly to be able to get through the storm.”

Building a business is the easy part. Sustaining the business is hard. Being born is easy. Staying healthy is difficult. This is where business and life intersect, but also separate. Bainbridge is not one for clichés or over-used and rarely-provoking statements. This is not a philosophy, but the reality of the business world, he explains.

“It is not the character we show in the good times that define us, it is how we navigate through the tough times and those times require self-reflection and a resilience to be able to move forward be it in business or life.”

So, business and life may be more familiar than we thought, at least through the visionary lens that captivates this successful leader of industry. Treating a business as a cycle, however, will only get one in trouble. To navigate the complex patterns of business, the hopeful entrepreneur must first value the self, the values, and the passion before the business. If one can stay on the carousel that symbolizes life, one can operate a business…Bainbridge has mastered both through his leadership, humanity, and selfless nature.