I had an interesting experience this past week. I went to the bottom of a limestone quarry for a photo shoot. I was 200 feet below where I had parked my car on the surface. I was encompassed by sheer cliffs of white stone walls. They call it bedrock. They crush it and compact it so it can be used for building foundations, roads, bridges, sidewalks, and more. Name your building project and it probably has stone as a base on which everything else is built.

Let me talk to you about another project I was called in to cover for a customer of ours. Bowling Green, Kentucky, is the home to the National Corvette Museum. You may remember hearing that on February 14, 2014, a sinkhole developed in a section of the museum. The opening was 40 feet across and dropped 25 feet down. Eight classic cars were literally swallowed when the floor simply dropped out from under them. It was discovered that the ceiling of a cave in the limestone below the museum had collapsed. It was also discovered that a good portion of the building where this occurred was also sitting directly over the cave and in jeopardy of falling as well. What can you do when the earth under your foundation can give way at any moment? In the case of the National Corvette Museum, they had to shore up the structure under the foundation. In lieu of a reliable bedrock, they created over 150 piles – deep foundation structures driven into the cave floor below and attached to the museum foundation and floor above – to secure the building and keep it from crumbling into the cave.

So what is the bedrock of your business? Is it your customer base? That may be a bit too much like building over a sinkhole, wouldn’t you agree? Customers come and customers go. Is it your leadership? I had an interesting discussion with Dr. Scott Livingston, a business leadership consultant that is also a customer. He said he is finding that more and more people who are put into leadership have a very shallow understanding of what their job really entails. They understand management – getting a job from concept to completion. But they don’t have much in the way of vision past the moving parts of their company. In other words, they don’t know how to lead people.

So I ask again, what is your bedrock? What is it you are relying upon in your business, your life and your future? Take a moment and think about this. The longer I live, the more I realize the unsettled nature of just about everything around me. It all changes – like sinkholes. There are very few things that do not change – like bedrock. If you are building the most important aspects of your being on that which may not be around tomorrow, then a change is needed. You need bedrock.

Here are some questions to ponder. Take a moment and think this through. First, bedrock does not happen in a day. It is the process of time. Limestone is sedimentary rock. It is built layer upon layer. What is timeless in your life? Second, bedrock is stable. There are certain rocks that are stable to build upon. There are certain rocks that are not. Shale is unstable. It crumbles easily. What is stable in your life? Finally, are their holes in what appears to be stable, but might cave in on itself over time? Limestone is susceptible to water damage. The caves under the Corvette Museum often flood during the wet seasons and create underground rivers. The water dripping down the walls erode away the stone. It doesn’t happen quickly, but after many of these types of events, the walls are insufficient to support the weight of the ceiling.

Take a good look at what you think is stable and test it to see if your assumptions are true. Are you relying on bedrock or have you built upon a sinkhole?