{"id":1686,"date":"2026-02-02T08:36:22","date_gmt":"2026-02-02T08:36:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/samgembel.com\/blog\/?p=1686"},"modified":"2026-02-23T11:16:38","modified_gmt":"2026-02-23T11:16:38","slug":"not-everyone-is-meant-to-climb-with-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/samgembel.com\/blog\/not-everyone-is-meant-to-climb-with-you\/","title":{"rendered":"Not Everyone Is Meant to Climb With You"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Some people are meant to walk with you at the beginning… but not everyone is meant to stand with you at the top.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s a story Joel Osteen shares that has stuck with me for years. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2019t 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\u2019t fully see yet, but He\u2019s already placed the \u201cplanks\u201d you\u2019ll need to get there – good breaks, the right people, the right timing, the healing, the solution, the open door. The scaffolding is proof there\u2019s a structure coming, even when you can\u2019t see the final skyline.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here\u2019s where it gets real. In business or in our leadership, we treat \u201cplanks\u201d 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\u2019t 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\u2019s not just blessing the finish line – He\u2019s engineering the climb.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The tricky part is this: scaffolding is temporary. It\u2019s necessary, but it\u2019s not meant to be permanent. And that\u2019s where leaders get confused. We meet people, we build with them, and we assume they\u2019re 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I learned this the hard way <\/em>in the early days of building Atlas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My first employee wasn\u2019t 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\u2019s what \u201cteam\u201d looked like: ride together, build together, “survive” together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2019t trying to shut him out. I was trying to lead the mission. When you\u2019re smaller, everyone can be in every decision. When you grow, that becomes impossible. Leadership requires separation sometimes. Not emotionally. Structurally. You can\u2019t run a growing company like a group text message thread. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And that\u2019s where things changed. He hated not being involved in everything. He started taking it personally. He didn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eventually, I had to \u201cpromote him to another company.\u201d 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\u2019t 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\u2019re trying to build, you can\u2019t pretend it\u2019s fine just because you have history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This isn\u2019t just business. It\u2019s friendships too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve 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\u2019re evil. Not because they\u2019re \u201cbad people.\u201d Sometimes they\u2019re just afraid of heights.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Because growth creates distance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not distance in love, but distance in mindset. Distance in tolerance. Distance in hunger. Distance in faith. Distance in the weight you\u2019re willing to carry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The ones who are all in for the climb? They rise with you. They adjust. They mature. They get stronger. They don\u2019t need to control the build to be committed to it. They don\u2019t need to be in every decision to stay secure. They bring solutions, not suspicion. They add strength, not stress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But don\u2019t be surprised when you keep building and some people start panicking. They\u2019ll call your growth \u201cchanging.\u201d They\u2019ll call your boundaries \u201cbeing different.\u201d They\u2019ll call your new standards of leading and operating \u201ctoo much.\u201d They\u2019ll call your discipline \u201cobsession.\u201d And if you\u2019re not careful, you\u2019ll shrink your future just to keep someone comfortable on a level they were never called to live on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ll tie a bow on this teaching with this: take inventory of your scaffolding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And the harder question – who in your life right now is trying to bring you down?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not with obvious attacks… but with subtle pressure. With doubt. With sarcasm. With guilt. With \u201cmust be nice.\u201d With emotional control. With resentment when you level up. With toxicity when they\u2019re no longer central.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

If God is building something in you, He\u2019s also built the planks to support you.
Don\u2019t keep walking on broken boards out of nostalgia. Your future is WAY too expensive for that.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Keep climbing. Keep building. And don\u2019t be shocked when some people are afraid of heights.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Some people are meant to walk with you at the beginning… but not everyone is meant to stand with you at the top. There\u2019s 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 … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1687,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1686","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-leadership","category-personal-growth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/samgembel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1686","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/samgembel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/samgembel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/samgembel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/samgembel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1686"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/samgembel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1686\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1690,"href":"https:\/\/samgembel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1686\/revisions\/1690"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/samgembel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1687"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/samgembel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/samgembel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/samgembel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}