This weekend, my younger brother and I climbed Mt. Elbert, which is the highest mountain in Colorado. We dragged ourselves out of bed at 4:30 a.m. on Sunday and we hit the trail before sunrise. It’s not a technical climb, but it is a steep trail, and with the whole hike at an elevation over 10,000 feet, even slight exertion left us huffing and puffing.

So, aside from an excuse to write about mountaineering exploits and post a scenic picture, why am I telling you this?

It’s to illustrate a point - with the right motivation, young people can be convinced to do damn near anything.

Think about all the young employees you’ve had who struggle with getting into work at 8 a.m. What passions motivate them to the extent that they would climb out of bed at 4:30? I’ll bet you if you asked them, they’d tell you they have some. Maybe it’s biking or music or poetry or service or Shakespeare or any of the billion different human interests that exist.

We know that young people will get out of bed and hike miles and miles in thin air for the things we’re passionate about. But the real question is how to find the young people who will do the same thing for your business.

You have two options:

A. You can get them to start caring by relating their work to their passion. This is kind of like bringing the mountain to Muhammad. It’s not impossible, but it’s often more trouble than it’s worth.

B. You can hire people who are already passionate about your business. Don’t make your selection process easy - make it hard. When something is difficult, you know that only the passionate will complete it. If this weren’t the case, the top of the mountain would be a lot more crowded than this: