When Jeff Bowling unexpectedly had to buy out an investor to keep the doors open at The Delta Cos., a medical staffing firm he’d founded in 1997, he found himself in a major cash crunch.

How could he maintain operations? Just as importantly, how could he keep his great team if he couldn’t pay them?

Many founders have been faced with trying to make payroll at some point, but this was a whole different level. He had to ask his key employees to make a leap of faith.

He brought them into a conference room and laid out the situation.

“We don’t have the cash to pay you,” he said in an anecdote first shared in the book Breaking Through, which I wrote with SIA Chief Analyst Barry Asin. “And we have given away all our receivables to finance the purchase of the business. But anything we can bill tomorrow I can pay you on.”

Bowling went on to tell me, “We had a tear jerk, gut check of a meeting, and by the end of the meeting, people were putting their credit cards in the middle of the table and saying, ‘Let’s go for it.’”

It was an amazing moment that would resonate for years within Delta. These were young people and top producers. They had options to pick up and go. Could you imagine explaining to friends and family that you’re foregoing getting paid and going into debt for a small, unproven company? Why do such a thing? They trusted Bowling, but was that enough?

Seeing Opportunity

There is a deeper theme we can pull from that event. I call it purposeful optimism. This is optimism fueled by trust in their leader, trust in themselves and a shared purpose to build something great. While some would see untenable risk in this situation, the employees saw an opportunity. It was time to go for it — and most of them did. 

Purposeful optimism doesn’t come naturally. Doubt and cynicism reign, and it’s human nature to confuse cynicism with wisdom and optimism with naïveté.

But I don’t know any successful staffing business that thrives with a cynical view of the world.    

It’s not as easy as just being optimistic, however. The trick is that leaders must be intentional. In the end, it’s a choice. Do you become pessimistic because you feel like a fraud, because you’re not qualified or because you catastrophize problems to the point to where they are unsolvable? You’re not alone. You just have work to do.

There are plenty of books and videos on the power of optimism, but below are a few practices that can help.

Practice gratitude. Appreciating what you have fuels a positive attitude. The best advice I received from a coach was to check myself before I entered the office — drop the baggage and come in with a positive attitude. I certainly wasn’t perfect, but I could tell the difference when I came in ready.   

Surround yourself with positive influences. You are the average of your associations. Look to develop relationships with peers or mentors who can reinforce a positive outlook even in difficult times. Bowling associated himself with likeminded executives. To this day, he will tell you that it was one of the most impactful things he has done.

Reframe challenges. Don’t catastrophize your problems. Usually, the worry will never become a reality — and challenges instead represent opportunities for improvements that will make you and your company stronger. A Penn State study shows that 85% of the things subjects worried about turned out “better than expected.”

Setting realistic goals. How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. Big problems can be overwhelming. Breaking them down to a step-by-step plan makes them manageable. In my work with staffing firms on improving operations, I show them that identifying and simplifying problems — and their solutions — has the biggest positive impact on performance.  

Bowling was able to build one of the most successful locums companies in the country. Much of that success started in the conference room where a committed team trusted their leader and believed they could build an exceptional company. Cultivating a similar mindset of purposeful optimism will empower your team to reframe challenges, embrace opportunities and gain the resilience to weather uncertain times.