I want to tell you a story from before I ran a company. Before managed IT, before cybersecurity consulting, before any of this. This story is from the time when I was standing on the back of a fire truck while a building burned in front of me and bees were stinging me through my jacket.
I am sharing it because it is the clearest illustration I have ever found for something I believe deeply about business: communication is not a courtesy. It is a responsibility. And when you fail at it, other people pay the price.
What It Means to Work the Pump Panel
When a fire truck arrives on scene, the driver does not simply park and walk away. Someone has to stay at the pump panel, and that job is one of the most mentally demanding positions on the truck.
When I was working the panel during an active fire, I was managing a system with multiple simultaneous inputs and outputs. Water was coming into the truck from a hydrant. Water was leaving the truck through multiple hose lines being operated by different crews. I had to track which crew was on which line, whether the truck was still drawing from its onboard tank or had switched to the hydrant, whether the hydrant connection was live and pressurized, whether the tank needed to be refilled, and whether the incoming pressure was dropping. Any one of those variables going wrong meant firefighters inside the building could lose water pressure. Losing water pressure inside a burning building is not an inconvenience. It is a life-threatening event.
There is no tolerance for inattention at the pump panel. You do not get to lose focus because you are tired, because something distracted you, or because you are dealing with something uncomfortable. The people inside the building are depending on you to hold your awareness across the entire system, all of it, at the same time, for as long as it takes.
That is what I was doing when the bees found me.
The Bees
The truck had apparently disturbed a nest in a nearby tree when we pulled up on scene. I did not notice it at first. Then they were on me, and I mean on me. Stinging through my jacket, inside my collar, on my hands and face. The pain was significant. I was getting hit over and over while I was standing at the panel with a fire working in front of me and multiple crews inside the building on hoses I was responsible for.
Everything in my body wanted to move. To get away from the panel, get off the truck, find someone to help me. The pain was real and it was not stopping.
I did not leave.
Not because I was trying to be a hero. I stayed because I was aware of what would happen if I walked away. At that moment, the truck was still transitioning from tank water to hydrant water. That switch had to be managed. The tank needed to be refilled once the hydrant was confirmed live. The system had to be brought to a stable state before I could hand it off. If I had walked away mid-transition, the pressure to the interior crews could have dropped. Firefighters inside a burning building could have lost their water supply because I could not handle being stung by bees.
So I stayed. I managed the transition. I stabilized the system. I confirmed the hydrant connection was live and the tank was topped off. I called for someone to relieve me at the panel. And only after I had a confirmed replacement in position did I step away from the truck and get medical attention.
That sequence matters. It was not random. It was the direct result of training that had become instinct, instinct that produced awareness, and awareness that made it possible to hold responsibility even when I was in pain and wanted nothing more than to be somewhere else.
What This Has to Do With Your Business
Your team is not going to lose water pressure. No one is going to get hurt because a project update did not go out on time. I understand that. I am not trying to tell you that running a business is the same as fighting fires.
But here is what I am telling you: the structure of the problem is identical.
When you are the pump operator, other people’s safety depends on your awareness. When you are part of a business team, other people’s time, trust, and momentum depend on your communication. The stakes are different. The principle is the same. If you go silent at a critical moment, if you miss the update that someone else was counting on, if you assume that no news is fine when people are waiting on you, someone else absorbs the cost of that gap. They lose time chasing you for an answer. They lose momentum waiting for information they need to move forward. They lose trust in you as someone they can count on. And over time, they stop depending on you, because experience has taught them that depending on you comes with risk.
That is the cost of poor communication in business. It does not show up on a single incident report. It accumulates. It erodes the trust that makes a team function. And it creates an invisible tax on everyone around you every time they have to stop what they are doing to track down information you should have sent without being asked.
Training Creates Instinct, Instinct Creates Awareness
One of the things I want business owners and their teams to sit with is this: I did not stay at that pump panel through sheer willpower. Willpower is not reliable enough for a moment like that. What kept me functional under that kind of pressure was training that had been repeated until it was automatic.
I knew the panel. I knew the sequence. I knew what stable looked like and what unstable looked like. I did not have to think through each step from first principles while bees were stinging me. The training had made the awareness instinctive.
The same thing is possible in business communication. When people develop the instinct to know what needs to be escalated, what needs to be closed out, and what others are waiting on, they stop needing to be reminded. They send the update before the question comes. They flag the delay before it becomes a problem. They treat communication as part of the job, not as something separate from it.
That instinct is built through repetition and through leadership that reinforces it consistently. It does not happen by accident. But it also does not require extraordinary people. It requires ordinary people who have internalized a simple standard: if someone is depending on me, my job is not done until they have what they need.
Ownership Means You Do Not Abandon Your Post
There is a phrase I use with my team and with the business owners I coach: ownership means you do not abandon your post because you are uncomfortable.
Discomfort is not an excuse. Being busy is not an excuse. Not knowing the full answer yet is not an excuse for silence. If you are the person at the panel, you stay at the panel until the system is stable or until you have a confirmed replacement. That is what ownership looks like.
In practice, this means sending the update before you are asked. It means flagging a delay as soon as you know about it instead of hoping no one notices. It means treating the people who depend on your communication the same way I treated the crews inside that building: as people whose ability to function depends on you doing your job.
The business version of losing water pressure is a team that is waiting on you while their momentum dies. A client who stops trusting your responsiveness. A project that slips because one person went quiet at the wrong moment. These things happen constantly in businesses of every size, and they almost always trace back to someone who did not think their update was important enough to send.
The Standard I Hold Myself To
I have run Mindcore Technologies long enough to know that the communication failures that hurt businesses are rarely dramatic. They are small. A status update that never came. A question that sat unanswered for two days. A project that was stuck and nobody said anything. Each one of those is a moment where someone was at the panel and walked away.
I think about that bee story often. Not because business is dangerous the way firefighting is dangerous, but because the lesson is the same at any stakes level. If someone is depending on you, your awareness of that dependency is the job. Not just the deliverable. Not just the task. The awareness.
Great operators know what other people need from them before those people have to ask. That is the standard. That is what I am working toward with my team, and it is what I talk about with every business owner I coach.
Meet Matt Rosenthal
Matt Rosenthal is the President and CEO of Mindcore Technologies and a business growth coach for SMB owners doing between $3M and $10M in annual revenue. Before building Mindcore, Matt served as a firefighter, an experience that shaped the way he thinks about responsibility, awareness, and leadership under pressure. He works with business owners to develop the instincts, systems, and team culture that allow companies to scale without breaking down.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the firefighter lesson Matt Rosenthal teaches in business coaching?
Matt uses a true story from his time as a firefighter on the pump panel to illustrate what real ownership looks like under pressure. The core lesson is that responsibility means maintaining awareness of what others depend on you for, even when you are uncomfortable, distracted, or dealing with something difficult.
Why does communication matter so much in a business team?
When one person fails to communicate, everyone around them absorbs the cost. Team members lose time waiting for information, lose momentum on projects that stall, and lose trust in the person who went silent. Over time, poor communication erodes the foundation that makes a team function effectively.
What does it mean to develop instinct for communication?
Just as firefighter training makes certain responses automatic under pressure, business teams can develop the instinct to know what needs to be communicated, to whom, and when, without being prompted. This instinct is built through consistent standards, reinforced by leadership, and practiced until it becomes part of how someone works.
How does ownership apply to communication specifically?
Ownership means you do not consider your job done until the people depending on you have what they need. In a communication context, that means sending updates proactively, flagging delays early, and never going silent when others are waiting. It means treating your team’s time and trust as something you are accountable for, not something they manage around you.
How can a business owner improve communication culture on their team?
It starts with modeling the standard yourself and making expectations explicit. Teams need to know what proactive communication looks like and why it matters. Consistent reinforcement, clear escalation norms, and a leadership culture that rewards transparency over silence will build that instinct across the team over time.
Take This Conversation Further
If this resonates with how you think about your team, or if it describes a gap you know exists in your business, book a free strategy call and let’s talk about how to close it.
