The High-Five Standard

Go give someone a high-five. Notice how it feels.

I opened principle three of The Big 4 with that instruction because I wanted readers to feel the difference between a transaction and a vote of confidence. Every sale is someone saying I believe in you. Both parties should feel it.

At the time, I called it “embody the high-five.” Now I call it Commit — and I pair it with Deliver, which was principle four: consistently do what you say you’ll do.

These were always two halves of the same idea. I just hadn’t named them that way yet.

Commit: the sale is a responsibility

The high-five framing captures something the word “sales” buries. When someone pays you, they’re lending you trust and capital. They’re betting you’ll create more value with it than they could create alone.

That’s a borrowed obligation.

I wrote about this instinct elsewhere — in My Purpose, where commitment shows up as a daily practice: speak the truth, keep promises, accept outcomes. The business version is the same discipline applied to someone else’s money and expectations.

An Entrenaut asks before taking significant payment: can I honestly create more value with this than the customer can with it themselves? If the answer is no, restructure or walk away. Overcharging breaks the commitment.

Deliver: the floor is the standard

Principle four was about the restaurant you trust because it delivers what it promises every single time. Consistency builds the kind of security that makes people recommend you without being asked.

In The 4 Pillars, I called this pillar Consistency — systems, standards, reliability at scale.

The Entrenaut version is harder. Deliver means the floor of your work is what you’re proud of. Your most burned-out client should still want to work with you. Your worst interaction should still represent something you’d stand behind.

You have to build that into how you work.

Why these two stay together

Commit and Deliver are two halves of trustworthiness. One is the promise. The other is keeping it.

Looking across the blog, the thread was there early. The high-five. The purpose statement. The consistency pillar. The captain’s log mentality in CaLo BuJo — document what matters, navigate with intention, hold yourself to a standard even when no one’s watching.

Entrenaut made the standard explicit.

What I’d tell 2024 Mike

You had the pieces. You were describing the behavior before you had the operating system.

Read the originals: The Big 4, My Purpose, and The 4 Pillars of Revenue Growth. Then read what the framework looks like now.

Same journey. Tighter language. A word that finally fits.