Some people are meant to walk with you at the beginning… but not everyone is meant to stand with you at the top.
There’s a story Joel Osteen shares that has stuck with me for years.
He talks about scaffolding on a skyscraper job site. I have referenced this before many of times in some of the talks I’ve given. You don’t walk up to a brand-new build and see the finished building on day one. What you see is framework. The Steel. Temporary platforms. Planks laid across beams so workers can climb higher, carry weight, and keep building. And his point is simple: God is building something in your life that you can’t fully see yet, but He’s already placed the “planks” you’ll need to get there – good breaks, the right people, the right timing, the healing, the solution, the open door. The scaffolding is proof there’s a structure coming, even when you can’t see the final skyline.
Here’s where it gets real. In business or in our leadership, we treat “planks” like some random luck. A big client gets sold. A key hire shows up at just the right time. A vendor relationship saves your butt. A mentor says one sentence that changes your year. A project goes sideways, but it exposes a weakness that forces you to install a system that becomes a permanent upgrade. Most people don’t call that provision. They call it “coincidence”. But the longer I lead, and the more I study God’s word, the more I believe God is far more intentional than we give Him credit for. He’s not just blessing the finish line – He’s engineering the climb.
The tricky part is this: scaffolding is temporary. It’s necessary, but it’s not meant to be permanent. And that’s where leaders get confused. We meet people, we build with them, and we assume they’re supposed to stay bolted to the structure forever. But sometimes God sends a person to be one plank, not the whole platform. A season. A stage. A level.
I learned this the hard way in the early days of building Atlas.
My first employee wasn’t just an employee. By default with growth, he became a manager. I told him everything. I involved him in every decision. He was in the truck with me, in the grind with me, in the conversations with me. Heck, he rode with me all the way to West Virginia to buy our first real truck, Truck A1… because back then, that’s what “team” looked like: ride together, build together, “survive” together.
But as we climbed and hit our first few million in revenue, the decisions got heavier. The moves got bigger. The financial stakes got real. I wasn’t trying to shut him out. I was trying to lead the mission. When you’re smaller, everyone can be in every decision. When you grow, that becomes impossible. Leadership requires separation sometimes. Not emotionally. Structurally. You can’t run a growing company like a group text message thread.
And that’s where things changed. He hated not being involved in everything. He started taking it personally. He didn’t just disagree, he became toxic. It was like he made it three or four levels up the scaffolding, and then when he realized we were going higher without him holding every bolt, he tried to pull us back down to the ground where he felt safe.
Eventually, I had to “promote him to another company.” That phrase sounds nicer than it felt. It was hard. It was painful. It was one of those leadership moments where you realize: loyalty to a person can’t outrank loyalty to the mission God put in your hands. The mission has payroll attached to it. Families attached to it. Clients attached to it. Stewardship attached to it. And if someone is actively weakening the scaffolding while you’re trying to build, you can’t pretend it’s fine just because you have history.
This isn’t just business. It’s friendships too.
I’ve had many people come into my life for one plank. Two planks. Three pieces of scaffolding. They helped me through a season. They helped me think different. They helped me get healthy. They helped me get perspective. They helped me take a step. But when it was time to add plank upon plank and climb higher, something in them shifted. Not because they’re evil. Not because they’re “bad people.” Sometimes they’re just afraid of heights.
Because growth creates distance.
Not distance in love, but distance in mindset. Distance in tolerance. Distance in hunger. Distance in faith. Distance in the weight you’re willing to carry.
The ones who are all in for the climb? They rise with you. They adjust. They mature. They get stronger. They don’t need to control the build to be committed to it. They don’t need to be in every decision to stay secure. They bring solutions, not suspicion. They add strength, not stress.
But don’t be surprised when you keep building and some people start panicking. They’ll call your growth “changing.” They’ll call your boundaries “being different.” They’ll call your new standards of leading and operating “too much.” They’ll call your discipline “obsession.” And if you’re not careful, you’ll shrink your future just to keep someone comfortable on a level they were never called to live on.
I’ll tie a bow on this teaching with this: take inventory of your scaffolding.
Who is strengthening the build in this season? Who is helping you carry weight, climb higher, and become the leader you are called to be?
And the harder question – who in your life right now is trying to bring you down?
Not with obvious attacks… but with subtle pressure. With doubt. With sarcasm. With guilt. With “must be nice.” With emotional control. With resentment when you level up. With toxicity when they’re no longer central.
If God is building something in you, He’s also built the planks to support you.
Don’t keep walking on broken boards out of nostalgia. Your future is WAY too expensive for that.
Keep climbing. Keep building. And don’t be shocked when some people are afraid of heights.