Riding Into the Storm
The parallels between a hailstorm in the high desert and building a company
There I was, on a high desert highway, the first time on my motorbike in over a year, heading out for a multi-day off-road adventure.
It was 80 degrees; the sun was blazing; the smell of juniper trees cut through the air; sunglasses on; loving life. Just me, the road, and the kind of quiet that only exists when you’re moving fast through open country. It was a treat to myself to celebrate completing and publishing my book, Powering Profits.
Motorcycling is visceral. You feel the temperature shift as you drop into a canyon. You smell rain before you see it. You sense the weight of the air change before the weather moves in. In a world built around screens and synthetic environments, riding reconnects you with senses most of us have completely forgotten about. And those senses started lighting up!
The air cooled quickly and I caught the smell of moisture on the wind. Ahead, the sky was darkening in a way that didn’t look like a passing cloud. Then my phone, mounted to the dash, started flashing alerts: Critical: SEVERE THUNDERSTORM WARNING. DESTRUCTIVE 80 mph winds. I was in the middle of nowhere on the open road without a bridge or overpass in sight to hide under. Within minutes, wind, lightning, thunder, and then hail hit me.
Let me tell you, riding at 65 mph in an 80mph crosswind while hail is driving into you is a painful and disorienting experience. I was soaked and cold within minutes. The question of whether to stop and wait it out, even while exposed, or keep going and ride through it didn’t have a clear answer.
I trusted my gut, slowed down, tracked the tire lines of a truck ahead to avoid riding on the slippery hail, kept my eyes further down the road than usual, and pressed through. My thinking was simple: two rubber tires moving forward felt safer than standing still, exposed to lightning and open wind for an unknown amount of time. I committed to the direction, adapted the speed and line, and kept going.
I broke through the other side of the storm, pulled into the first gas station, warmed my hands under a hand dryer in the bathroom, ordered a hot chocolate, and sat with it for a moment. I smiled. That was a crazy, dangerous experience. I had a great story to tell, and I hadn’t even reached the dirt yet, which was meant to be the hard part.
The Funny Thing About Building a Business
Within a few days of getting back from the trip, my co-founder, Dan Roberts, shared the image below and I laughed out loud. Building VECKTA has meant navigating COVID, a regional banking crisis, supply chain breakdowns, shifting policy, tariffs, elections, the emergence of AI, capital market cycles, and the ongoing challenge of building a new industry category and solution tailored to businesses and busy leaders.
None of it was in the plan and all of it had to be navigated.
That is the thing about entrepreneurship that nobody fully prepares you for. It is not the difficulty of the planned challenges that test you. You know it is going to be hard to raise capital, find product market fit, build a lasting culture, attract and retain the best talent, and build relationships and trust with individuals with whom you want to partner. The most difficult parts are the storms that appear without warning on what looked like a clear day when setting out.
The Parallels Are Hard to Ignore
On the bike, I had checked the weather and planned the route. The radar showed something on the edge of my path, but it looked like it would miss me. I made a reasonable call with the information I had, and I still got caught in a difficult, risky situation.
Sound familiar? Every founder and operator reading this has a version of that story. The quarter that looked solid until it didn’t. The partnership that made sense until the terms shifted. The market tailwind turned headwind while you were mid-execution. The incredible hire that turned out to be toxic. You planned, you prepared, and the storm showed up anyway.
The question is never whether the storm will come. It will! The question is what you do when it arrives.
On the bike, I did not freeze (not the cold kind, as I did, haha, the decision-making kind), and I did not turn back. I slowed down, extended my sight line, found the safest available line, and kept moving. It is a very unique aspect of riding that I have always loved: when the bike gets squirrelly in gravel, sand, or other loose surface, give it more throttle, and it provides forward momentum and stability. Freak out, back off the throttle, and the nose of the bike dives and digs in, and before you know it, you are down, with little warning. Often this is the same in business, not always, and this is where the experience comes into play.
What Actually Gets You Through
Looking back on difficult chapters at VECKTA or in life, a few things stand out as the real differentiators. Not the strategy deck, not the perfect hire and certainly not the lucky timing. The things that actually mattered were:
Knowing your destination. You do not navigate a storm well if you are unsure where you are going. Having a clear view of what we are building and why it matters has kept us on track when conditions around us were chaotic.
Trusting your instincts, backed by real data. On the bike, I made a judgment call based on what I could feel, smell, and see, plus what the data on my phone was telling me. That combination matters as gut instinct without data can be reckless, and often data without instinct is paralysis. Together, they give you the confidence to act.
Surrounding yourself with the right people. Riders talk about the importance of who you ride with, and for the next few days, I had the privilege of meeting and riding with some great, experienced people. In a storm or on a trail in tough conditions, it matters enormously whether the person ahead of you is a steady hand or nervous and panicking. Are they loose and controlled, or are they tight, anxious, and erratic? The same is true in business. The advisors, partners, investors, and customers who share your vision, values, and commitment to outcomes are not just a nice-to-have; they are the differentiator that gets you through.
Committing to the decision. The worst thing you can do in a crosswind is hesitate. You lean in, hold your line, and adapt continuously. Half-committed is more dangerous than full-committed to the wrong line. In business, teams can survive bold, wrong decisions far better than they survive sustained indecision.
The Rest of the Trip
I made it to camp, pitched my tent, got into dry clothes, ate a warm meal, and had a cold beer. I sat there reflecting on a day that had gone sideways before I even reached the route I had planned. And I felt good! It was not relief, it was awesome! That distinction matters.
The next three days delivered everything the trip was supposed to be: dirt roads, mountain passes, hot springs, caves, great people, good food, a few adrenaline spikes, and memories I will carry for a long time. None of it would have felt as earned without the storm.
That is the thing about the hard days: when you come out the other side, the camp, the beer, the view, all of it lands differently. We need to enjoy all of these moments.
The Bigger Truth
I would not trade building VECKTA for any other role. Not because it is easy, it is not. But because the combination of purpose, challenge, people, and impact is unlike anything else I have found or experienced.
The distributed energy transition is inevitable. The schedule, the speed, the cost, the detours, those are still being written. My team and I do not control all of it. But we control how we prepare, how we respond, and whether we keep moving when conditions get ugly. It is our mission to unlock, enable and orchestrate our onsite energy future for reliable, affordable, sustainable and thriving outcomes at scale.
That is enough, more than enough!
Pick your destination (and this may change), embrace the journey, surround yourself with people you trust and respect, and when the hail hits…. lean in, pick your line, and ride through it with confidence and a smile!
Power Moves
A few of my takeaways that you may enjoy sitting with and reflecting on:
Plan, but build your resilience for when the plan breaks. The storm was not meant to be in my path, but I still got caught in it. Great operators plan well and adapt fast. Both matter.
Commit to your direction, adapt your tactics. The destination did not change when the weather hit. The speed and the line did. Know the difference between strategy and tactics, and be ruthless about which one you are changing.
Surround yourself with people who share your values and your nerve. When things get hard, the quality of your network becomes the quality of your outcomes. Invest in those relationships before you need them.
Celebrate coming through the storm. The hot chocolate at the gas station mattered, and the beer at camp mattered. Build in the moments that acknowledge what you came through. As individuals and teams, we need those moments too.
If this resonated, the full framework for turning business adversity into strategic advantage is in Powering Profits, available now on Amazon. And if you want to see how we are applying these principles in real time to the energy decisions facing businesses today, you know where to find us at VECKTA.
Fantastically written, Gareth, and those views are insane!