BASE CAMP
First, some background; where are we, and how did we get here:
I am an experiential learner, I learn on the field not in the laboratory. Experience is not the best teacher, but sometimes, and for some personalities, like mine, it’s the only teacher.
My wilderness journey felt like a mountain climb, when I looked down I got scared when I looked up I got discouraged. But the pain of my former captivity motivated me for the climb and gave me the resolve not to turn back.
Before my climb could begin, I had some work to do, because “what got me here, wouldn’t get me there”. I had to learn some things and I had to unlearn some things. That’s what I did in my “Base Camp”
Base Camp is where you prepare for your climb. Base Camp is where I learned the LIVE INSIDE OUT principle and the answers to three key questions:
- Who I was?
- How was I made?
- How do I work.?
The LIVE INSIDE OUT principle is simply that you cannot be effective on the outside until you are clear about what’s on the inside.
As my friend and coach, Johnny Parker writes in Frontstage Backstage: External Success Requires Internal Health, you will not be able to handle the bright lights of your front stage if you don’t first do your work backstage. My backstage was a mess!
I needed a new way to operate, a new operating system, but before I could accept the fact that my inner life was not clear, before I could answer the three Base Camp questions, I had to know the answer to the three questions every human being longs to know:
- Am I accepted?
- Am I secure?
- Am I significant?
I call these, the “in the mirror” questions, because no one can answer them for you. And unless and until your answer is yes to all, you will not be able to freely become all you were created to be.
Once I had metabolized the answers to these three questions, I could then answer the three base camp questions: who am I, how was I made, and what was I created to do?
My answers formed my philosophy, system, and leadership framework that this new book explains. It is a philosophy from my heart, from the inside out. It is guided by my faith and it is driven by my purpose which is to build big people, not a big company.
I call my new operating system: ASW 2.0. The climb has been both transformative and life giving for me.
It can be for you too. If you are looking for more from this life, this philosophy, system and framework can help you find what you are searching for.
The Virtuoso Leader Philosophy is the foundation on which THE 4 CORNERSTONES OF A PROSPEROUS BUSINESSsystem is built. It was born out of my experience as an entrepreneur, leader, CEO, and coach, and it took a journey through a wilderness for it to be fully formed.
While the philosophy is the foundation of the four cornerstones, the framework is a distillation of the wisdom that came out of my “wilderness years.” These years were the seed stock of LEADERSHIP FORMED IN THE WILDERNESS; The Forging of a Virtuoso Leader, the second book in the PRO LEADERSHIP Series.
The first Book, PRO LEADERSHIP, Establishing Credibility, Building Your Following & Leading With Impact. Andrew Wyatt (Morgan James, 2021), is being revised and republished under the title, LEARNING LEADERSHIP, Confronting Every Leaders Three Big Challenges. This book was the result of 25 years of business experience, building and leading an enterprise. It contains 24 leadership principles taken from the yellow legal pad that tracked all my steps and occupied the top-drawer of my desk for the first 25-years of my career.
It’s been said, adversity builds character, but prosperity reveals it. I know this is true because I lived it. The company I founded, lead and helped to build grew big, fast, but it didn’t last. My piece: many reasons, but a large contributor; my character could not carry abundance, so my company eventually came to a painful end.
And I stepped from the corner office, into the wilderness, and began the journey to VIRTUOSO LEADERSHIP.
I lost my CAREER, but I gained a CALLING.
Like Israel in bible times, I left the prosperity of my “Egypt” and stepped into an unknown wilderness, not knowing where I was going or how long the journey to the promised land would take. Fortune and position had disappeared, but that was not the greatest loss, no, the greatest loss was my identity and with it, the courage to lead.
My first operating system, ASW 1.0 was driven by the 3-Bs: my Business, my Balance Sheet, my Bank Account. That operating system was exchanged for something much more valuable and lasting. I was given WISDOM born from adversity.
The bible says, “wisdom is better than silver or gold”. I didn’t want to believe it, now I do.
The Virtuoso Leader Philosophy is the outcome of hundreds of wilderness hours, the metabolization of vast amounts of wisdom and experience, gathered and consumed like manna, one day at a time. The answers to hard questions.
It all came out of what looked like a defeat, a failure. And as so often is the case with business struggles, it comes down to “the people” and leads to a person, often whose character is not ready to carry abundance, so what is built will not last.
But what has come as the result of the death of ASW 1.0 is greater than I could ever imagine. In its place a virtuoso leader philosophy was born, and a system has been developed: THE 4 CORNERSTONES OF A PROSPEROUS BUSINESS. This system together with its framework, game plans and playbooks are the guideposts to guide anyone who desires to join the journey to VIRTUOSO LEADERSHIP.
Until we next time,
LIVE INSIDE OUT,
Andy Wyatt
June 5, 2025