The Altitude Audit: Why Your 2026 Vision Will Never Be Found in Your 2025 Calendar

Every November, I watch the same pattern unfold across the legal industry—managing partners huddled over calendars, budgets, KPIs, and headcount projections, convinced that the next level of growth lives somewhere inside the walls of their existing schedule.

It doesn’t.

You cannot build an eight-figure future from a six- or seven-figure trench. And you certainly will not find your next-level vision inside the defensive walls of your calendar.

The mistake I see—even among highly successful law-firm founders—is not a lack of intelligence, desire, or performance. It’s a lack of altitude. And until you deliberately change the altitude at which you think, your breakthrough will remain out of reach.

That’s the purpose of the Altitude Audit.

Your Calendar Is a Fortress—And a Fortress Cannot Create the Future

Your calendar is built to protect you: time blocks, Do Not Disturb windows, partner meetings, budget reviews, client demands, operational fires. When used well, it can be an incredibly effective defensive system.

But that’s the problem: A fortress can protect you, but it cannot expand your world. You cannot launch a new vision from behind a wall.

If you keep trying to plan 2026 inside the same constraints, the same four walls, the same Zoom meetings, the same office air, the same 30-minute gaps between client calls—you will keep recreating a slightly upgraded version of the same year you just lived.

Your next level won’t come from the trenches. It requires a different vantage point.

You Haven’t Hit a Performance Ceiling—You’ve Hit a Perspective Ceiling

Most lawyers assume they’re struggling because they haven’t worked hard enough, systemized enough, delegated enough, or hired enough. But the real issue isn’t a performance ceiling. It’s a perspective ceiling.

When you plan from the trenches, you get trench-level solutions. When you plan from altitude, you get C-suite expansion.

This is the essence of the 8-Figure Blindspot: most founders try to solve multi-million-dollar challenges using the same mindset and environment that created their current results. You cannot read the label from inside the cereal box, and you cannot build an eight-figure vision from inside your office.

Altitude Is Non-Negotiable for 8-Figure Thinking

You don’t get true vision in a committee meeting.

You don’t get it in a Zoom call.

You don’t get it from KPIs or budget reports.

You get it at 30,000 feet.

Literally—and metaphorically.

During a recent flight, staring down at the Seattle airport I was urgently trying to reach for a connection, I was reminded of this truth: altitude changes everything. From the terminal, your world is narrow. From the runway, it expands slightly. But from the window of a plane, you see the landscape, the patterns, the opportunities.

Vision requires altitude. And altitude requires intention.

To help my clients—and now you—build the next-level vision they’re capable of, I teach the Three Ws of Altitude.

W #1: WHAT — How You Show Up

The first W is what: your energy, your mindset, your lens.

As an iPEC-certified coach and Energy Leadership Index Master Practitioner, the foundation of my work is Energy Leadership. Your thoughts, beliefs, and energy levels determine how big you allow yourself to think. If you’re stuck in stress, urgency, or overwhelm, you will default to catabolic (reactive, limiting, small-box) thinking.

Ask yourself:

• Am I thinking small, in a medium box, in a large box—or in no box at all?

• Am I reacting, or am I creating?

• Am I solving problems, or am I building possibilities?

Catabolic planning sounds like: “We should be able to grow 3–5% if nothing goes wrong.”

Anabolic planning sounds like: “What would a 5x or 10x look like—and who would I need to become to lead it?”

Your energy is the key to altitude.

W #2: WHERE — The Environment That Shapes Your Thinking

The second W is where. Environment is strategy. You cannot think big in the same environment that demands you think small. You cannot do identity-level work in your office. You cannot transform your leadership between Zoom calls. You cannot expand your vision inside the room where the problems live.

Altitude requires space—literal space.

Every year I disappear into the mountains in Ketchum, Idaho. I sit in a five-star hotel, walk to the local coffee shop, stare at the mountains, journal, sketch the future, and create without interruption. It’s my personal altitude practice.

Your version may be different. But it must be intentional.

Because transformation is excavation—and excavation requires a protected site.

If you want eight-figure clarity, you need an environment designed for eight-figure thinking. Your conference room is not that environment.

W #3: WHEN — C-Suite Thinking Scheduled Into Your Life

The final W is when. Show me your calendar, and I will show you your priorities.

Founders schedule budget meetings, partner retreats, KPI reviews, team check-ins… but almost never schedule the one thing that separates CEOs from technicians: Uninterrupted C-suite thought time.

Not strategizing.

Not problem-solving.

Not catching up.

Thinking.

If it’s not on your calendar, it doesn’t exist. It’s a wish.

One of my clients in Seattle now blocks every Friday morning for big-thought time by the water. No agenda. No laptop. Just thinking. In one month, his clarity, confidence, and leadership have transformed.

If you want to lead at eight figures, you need altitude time every single week, month, and quarter.

Strategic Planning Is NOT Visioning

Most firms confuse planning with visioning. Strategic planning is important, but it’s inherently catabolic:

• It’s reactive.

• It’s problem-solving.

• It’s budget-focused.

• It’s management.

That is step two.

Vision is step one.

Vision is:

• Anabolic

• Creative

• Possibility-led

• Identity-shifting

• Limitless (at first)

If you try to do visioning the way you do planning, you will build a plan for the future that looks suspiciously like your past.

Are You Ready to Gain Altitude?

Your clients, your team, your family, your community—they are all waiting for you to step into the leader you know you’re capable of becoming.

2026 is coming.

Your next chapter is coming.

If you want it to look meaningfully different, you must think at a different altitude.

Not in the trenches.

Not in your office.

Not between calls.

Somewhere else.

Thinking bigger than you’ve ever allowed yourself to think. Becoming someone capable of building what you know is possible.

If you feel the gap between the seven-figure founder you are and the eight-figure CEO you know you must become, I invite you to have a private conversation with me.

Because everything you’re reaching for begins the moment you decide to gain altitude.