Fast = Alone. Far = Together.
By Caleb & Mary Beth Lutz · July 25, 2026 · pairs with Start Here: Episode 5 - Fast = Alone. Far = Together.
This is a written companion to Episode 5 of the What They Don't Teach You Start Here series. The full video is below. If you want to learn what an Aspen grove, a wild Hailstorm, and the movie Gladiator have to do with each other, we’d love to point you toward watching the full video (even at 2x speed). Fair warning, this is one of our most personal takes we’ve ever filmed.
If you need to skim the ideas quickly, read on. Here's the case we make for not building your success in isolation.
We open with an old saying: if you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go together. When it comes to money and freedom, most people pick fast, head down, trying to prove they can do it themselves. And most all of them stall. In this one, we walk through why asking for help isn't weakness, why going it alone tends to stall you, and why together is a Massive key for actually transforming your life.
Asking for help is not weakness
Let’s dive in. And let’s be real, asking for help is much easier said than done, especially for guys. There's a real pull to do it yourself and keep the pride of having done it alone. If you also grew up on Braveheart and Gladiator, there’s probably something in you to become that lone hero standing against the world. But watch those stories again. Behind every one of those heroes are the people who poured in for years before, let’s say, Willy became William Wallace.
One of the strongest moves a person can make is to say out loud: how do you do this? I'm not satisfied with where I am. You're clearly strong here, and I'd like to learn from you. A lot of people work hard to look self-made, and we don't think anyone actually is. Everyone doing well over time read the books, found the podcasts, had mentors, and got taught by somebody somewhere. Believing the self-made story is costly, because it means taking every hard lesson personally and in sequence, without the wisdom & actual short cuts from those who came before you.
Asking for help isn't admitting you're less. It actually moves you further into your purpose, and faster. The strongest people we know are the ones constantly wanting to be in the room where they know the least, which takes real humility and real strength at the same time. Those same people tend to have mentors they actually submit to, ask for feedback, and keep honest peers and coaches close.
The flip side, walking in pride, is expensive. If you can't learn from the people around you, you have to hit every hard knock of life on your own.
Going it alone tends to stall you
Your ceiling is only so high on your own, and your own experience only stretches so far. That's the honest limit of solo, and it's why we make the case for building a circle of people who've walked roads you haven't.
A season we couldn't see clearly
We share a hard season here that you’ll need to watch the video to witness. Last year we walked through a painful family loss, something new with no map for it, and no idea how many people already around us had quietly walked the same road.
Letting those people in gave us two things.
The first was that sharing the weight made it carryable, more than either of us could have held alone. The relationships where we let people in went deeper, and stayed there.
The second was perspective we couldn't generate from inside it. We were too close to see straight, and the people a step past it could say the plain, steadying things: this is normal, you're going to be okay, and if it resurfaces later, that's normal too. You can't really hand yourself that. Someone else has to.
The list of reasons you're "not ready"
We name the trap of self-disqualification here. You can find a hundred reasons to count yourself out: your background, your finances, some struggle you'd rather nobody knew about. Then you say it out loud to one trustworthy person and find almost nobody around you is running spotless either. The people who move forward aren't the ones who have it all together. They're the ones who stopped pretending they did and got perspective on what was actually holding them back.
The aspen grove
A favorite image of ours is the aspen grove. Aspens in Colorado may not look like much tree by tree, but a fire can burn a whole stand to the ground and a few years later it's back, because the trees are connected underground. One shared root system, functionally a single organism. The tops burn and the roots keep feeding each other, so the whole stand recovers together.
That's what a real community does. You take the hits together, you can even get burned down together, but if you keep the connection you have a far better chance of pulling nutrients from where there's surplus and sharing them where there's need. Mary Beth shared the old line that a problem shared is a problem cut in half, and added that in her experience it's a lot more than half. Burnout, for a lot of people, and the different things they turn to because of it, comes down to trying to carry everything by themselves. If you want to move forward not just fast but sustainably, going it completely alone works against you.
Aspen Grove
Together goes further: mentors and peers
We split the "together" into two roles that do different jobs: mentors and peers. We need both.
Find a mentor
The picture we use is a minefield. Your mentor already crossed it, so they know where the mines sit and can tell you not there, not there, not there before you take a step. A good mentor isn't trying to hold power over you or keep you a step behind. Their aim is to develop you so you get further than they did, faster.
Our personal experience tells us, where we’ve succeeded, it’s a joy to help others succeed faster and avoid the pitfalls we fell into. If someone's starting out in a freight agency, Caleb can save them a lot of time on what to do and what not to do. Same with direct sales, which companies to work or not, which practices to avoid or spend most of your time on. That's the immeasurable value a mentor hands you.
On earning a mentor's time, let's be realistic. You usually won't get hours up front, and that's fair, because these are hard-sought relationships. But when someone who's crossed the field gives you one recommendation, and you go apply it and come back to say "I did this and here's what happened," everything changes. They see the investment converting, so they invest more, put more in to get more return, and want to see it multiplied in your life. Most people who've had real success know exactly how much was poured into them, and nine times out of ten they want to pay it forward.
We also offer a few practical markers for spotting a good one. Look for someone a few steps ahead who can answer your specific questions. Look for someone you'd honestly trade places with in a heartbeat and be grateful. And look at their whole life, not just the income they may flaunt, which is the lowest-hanging fruit to admire. If someone's life is, as we half-jokingly put it, a wild hailstorm (iykyk), take note. Whereas someone whose marriage is solid and who's most respected by the people who've known them longest is showing you signs that much more than their bank account is right.
Keep peers close
Peers keep you honest. They tell you what's actually happening in your world, remind you you're not crazy, and keep you moving. You need to see real wins while you're in the grind, and you also need people unafraid to say "we're going through it too." A circle that only shows the highlight reel isn't a circle, it's an audience.
Why we’re building the Champions Community
We end on why we started building the Champions Community: to collaborate with people who are genuinely strong in their field, with the intentional agenda to openly share and learn from each other and contribute to each other’s success. We're drawn to the ones whose success isn't wrapped up in the optics of it, who built it for their family and community and show up consistently to contribute.
As we note live in the video, we have to vet people before adding them as a Champion Collaborator, getting to know them first. If you're someone with fruit on the tree in your field and this sounds like what you'd want to not just be part of but also contribute to, the Connect page is the place to reach out.
Champions Community application on Connect page
The takeaway
Asking for help isn't weakness. Going it alone tends to stall you. Together goes further, and usually faster too. As we see it, nearly everything worth building, income, influence, and the freedom underneath both, gets built With your people, not in spite of them.
If you've been grinding solo, the next step isn't just another late night. It's worth the risk to have that honest conversation with someone a little further down the road. And if you want a place to start finding those people, that's part of why the Champions Community exists.
You always have a choice to change your life.
🎯 Start here: theydontteachyou.com/start-here
📩 Connect with us or apply as a Champion Collaborator: theydontteachyou.com/work-with-us
