Going slow to go fast: search and rescue lessons for founders

Executive overview

Adrenaline and urgency push us to move fast at exactly the wrong moments. Speed without alignment causes mistakes that cost more time than the seconds saved.

"Slow is smooth and smooth is fast" — the search and rescue mantra that applies directly to execution, team alignment, and decision-making.

• Slowing down to reorient is faster than recovering from a preventable error.
• Alignment before execution outperforms fast solo action every time.
• Leaning into fear, not away from it, is where survival and learning happen.

Lean into fear, not away from it

• A plane crash investigation revealed the pilot stalled three times pulling up instead of diving to regain airspeed.
• The instinct to avoid the frightening thing — the ground coming up — is exactly what kills.
• Business parallel: running from a hard conversation, a bad quarter, or a difficult team moment compounds the problem.
• The real learning and recovery happens when you face the difficult thing directly.

Slow is smooth and smooth is fast

• On a rescue mission, rushing down a ravine to reach a victim 30 seconds faster risks creating a second casualty.
• Experienced team members intervene: "You making it there faster doesn't change the outcome. You falling does."
• Slowing down to check your rope system, recheck GPS, and reorient is never wasted time.
• Going fast in the wrong direction accelerates failure.
• Applied to Alianza: planning and team alignment as a prerequisite to execution, not an obstacle to it.

Muscle memory through deliberate training

• Search and rescue teams train twice a month — practicing what they've done dozens of times already.
• Reason: when speed becomes unavoidable, muscle memory carries you through without breakdown.
• Navy SEALs operate the same way — most of the time is slow, deliberate, and quiet, so the fast moments don't fail.
• In business: process, repetition, and shared language allow teams to execute at pace without constant course-correction.

Team checks and diversity of perspective

• Solo execution eliminates the person who catches the knot tied wrong or the anchor not set.
• Best idea wins, not whose idea wins — starting at the board level, cascading through the org.
• Diversity of background only works when psychological safety lets those ideas actually surface.
• A monoculture is fragile; one virus, pest, or blind spot can move through the whole system unchecked.

Playing the long game

• Lost a major contract the week of Christmas — as a young founder, nearly crushing.
• Search and rescue experience recalibrates: best days aren't as good as they seem; worst days aren't as bad.
• Sustained effort in the right direction over long periods yields compounding results.
• "Success is largely a matter of hanging on until everybody else lets go."

From Getphone to Alianza

• Won a BYU business plan competition as a solo undergrad — spawned Getphone.
• Survived the Great Recession through frugality and patience; sold to AT&T at a low point.
• AT&T asked them to operate the platform for a few months — that arrangement lasted five years.
• That anchor relationship became the foundation of Alianza's strategy and 15+ years of growth.
• The apparent failure became the launching pad.