I had my second saxophone performance on Sunday. My last one was in May of 2024 after about 11 months of learning the alto sax.

So much has happened since then. I switched from alto to tenor. I moved from a group that was focused on rock to one focused on jazz (and jazz improv). I have come a LONG ways—better at playing in tune, being able to actually improvise at a rudimentary level, getting comfortable with changing instruments and mouthpieces and reeds.

But my FIRST reaction when I watched my wife’s video from my performance was feeling self-conscious about how awful I sounded.

Seeing Potential Rather Than Accomplishment

In every regard, I am a dramatically better sax player than I was last May. But my focus was on what I was NOT doing well, rather than how I had gotten better. Coach Dan Sullivan calls this perspective “The Gap Versus the Gain.” The idea is that we always evaluate ourselves against our potential rather than seeing how far we’ve come.

It’s a very human thing. It also keeps us mired in dissatisfaction.

Is it helpful? Absolutely. Because there is always more to do, and to be, and let’s face it, dissatisfaction is motivating, if exhausting.

But no matter where you are, you are just getting started AND you have already come so far.

The trick is in being able to hold both. To be grateful AND inspired.

Having Help Along the Way

I have a great teacher who has been with me from the start. He has an academy for kids (six bands of kids performed Sunday after we did, and they were AWESOME). And with me and a few others, he is beginning to teach adults who are new to their instruments.

One of my favorite things about him is that he doesn’t get too worried about how much more I have to learn. (Like I do.)

He only focuses on the next step. And then the next step after that.

Sometimes I get impatient with that. I get frustrated with myself, with him, with the fact that things aren’t going faster. But every time I get ahead of myself I find it only slows me down.

Who in your life reminds you how far you’ve come? Who in your life keeps you focused on the very next step when you could easily get overwhelmed by everything there is to do?

There Are No Shortcuts

The internet is full of overnight successes who have been at it for ten years or more. (I’m in year nine of my coaching business—I know.)

It can look like someone suddenly made it big, but if you look closely, you will find that’s never the case.

I didn’t start playing saxophone at 58 because I thought I would get good fast (though I did HOPE that, I confess). I started for two other reasons—

First, I love jazz (think Miles Davis Kind of Blue era stuff) and had always been fascinated with the idea playing an instrument and being able to improvise on that instrument. I have literally had dreams of playing the sax, and when my son quit in eighth grade I suddenly had both a saxophone and a teacher readily available.

Second, I know my 78-year-old self will appreciate having twenty years of saxophone experience and I really want to give him that gift.

What’s the Gift You Want to Give Your Future Self?

What would your future self most like from you?

What could you do today to start to give that?

What regret will you have if you don’t?

They say that you shouldn’t die with your song still unsung. What does reading that bring up in you?

Drop a comment below with your thoughts.

I reached out to a founder I know a few days ago, just to check in, to see if 2025 was off to a good start. I was doing this with a few people, and just wanted to get a couple emails out there before I went off to do other things.

I wasn’t thinking.

This founder lives in LA. Santa Monica, to be precise.

Close enough, it turns out, to have been evacuated twice because of the fires.

🤦

In my rush to reach out, I was making it about my agenda, about what I wanted.

And while he was gracious about it, I can only imagine how he felt.

Is There an Agenda Behind Your Caring?

I always want to get off to a good start in the New Year. It’s often my busiest time of year. Founders come to be because they went through something that they don’t want to go through again, whether it’s getting stuck, not trusting their people, being exhausted, or all three.

At times I notice an urgency to that. There is some FOMO, that if I don’t capitalize on the first part of the year the rest of the year is doomed to fail.

And that focus on myself, on my agenda, can lead me to do some stupid selfish things, like sending an email to someone in LA with the subject line, “Is your 2025 off to a good start?”

I hope I’m learning from this. Because your agenda can show up in so many ways—

When you are talking with a potential client.

When you are talking with an employee.

When you are talking with a potential investor or board member.

Do you want a relationship, or just transactions?

The Presence of Authentic Relationship

One of the things that I constantly strive to get better at sounds deceptively simple—

To slow down enough to be with the person I am with.

Whether that’s my client or my spouse, can I be there for them, and their agenda?

Can I set aside all the other things that I am thinking about, just for now?

Can I repair when, inevitably, I DON’T do that?

Does This Resonate?

If so, reach out. I would love to hear how this shows up for you.

I’m creating my next Zoom call for founders and would love to hear what is on your mind. What YOU are struggling with and who you’d like to hear from on that topic.

And I’m creating a special two day event in Denver this coming October, on The Art and Science of Next Level Living. A small group of founders looking at big questions—

Is this (a financially successful business or exit) all there is?

Why am I ACTUALLY here?

What’s next for me?

Let me know if you would like to be considered for either or both of these events.

Last week, when I wrote about creating in 2025, there were a couple of lines I added that at the time felt like a throwaway—

When you get out of the way, it might feel like something is calling you to be created. Or that something is wanting to emerge through you. Honor that.

What if this is actually the highest form of creating?

I realized that I could have and should have said more—much more—about these two lines.

That a newsletter was calling to emerge just on this.

It’s a path I’m familiar with.

You, on Purpose

There are a lot of ways to create in the world.

Yes, you can create something to make money, whether a profession, a career, or a business.

Yes, you can create something because it brings you joy—simply because it is fun to create it.

These ways of creating might feel a bit difficult at first, but they get easier. And more fun.

But they aren’t always the path to fulfillment.

Sometimes, it feels like life is calling on you to create something that you don’t want to do. That you resist doing. That feels too big or scary. That you have no idea how you could possibly do it.

In August 2016 this happened to me. And as I face my 60th birthday, a bit less than a month from now, I want to share more about that journey. I want to share why I’m so happy that I trusted my instincts and, at least after some initial resistance, took the leap.

And I want to suggest that something might be calling you, too, if you get quiet enough to hear it.

A Calling or a Fantasy?

I’ve been on a self-improvement journey in one form or another since at least the 1980s. I began a decades-long meditation practice in 1996. I started going on retreats and working with spiritual teachers in 2005. But I didn’t discover coaching as an occupation until 2008.

I didn’t seriously consider it as a potential occupation for me until about 2014. Though I did tinker with trying to get some clients on this side along the way.

Even when I was laid off from my last corporate role in 2016, it never occurred to me that I could match my prior salary working as a coach.

It seemed totally impractical, a pipe dream.

But it’s happened.

Because even though it was frustrating and difficult, there was something in me that was determined to make it work.

To reeducate a network of people who thought of me as a lawyer and consultant and health care expert.

To retrain myself on working on the self (both mine and others), something ultimately impossible to understand, rather than the skills and strategies and content that I did know.

To slowly build a business that has grown every year and that now well exceeds my prior salary.

When I started I had never had a paying coaching client, let alone worked with a founder. Today, founders and CEOs pay me six figures to work with me.

How does this happen?

The Most Powerful Commitment

One of my coaches along the way, John Patrick Morgan, said something that continues to inspire me—

“The most powerful commitments are the ones that you have no idea how to fulfill.”

My experience has taught me something even more compelling—

If you really want to create something, the universe, which somehow planted that seed in you, will also guide you in how to create it.

You can call it whatever you want. Whatever works for you. Your gut, intuition, guidance, angels, God.

But there is something that, when we get out of the way, shows up to help us.

Within your desire is hidden the means to achieve it.

For the first several months of my new coaching venture, I thought I was committed. But I am now convinced that one other thing was necessary for that commitment to be absolute.

Burning the Bridges

When I was working in the corporate world, I was living in Chicago and then later Washington DC. And I commuted to Boston for about six years, too.

Big cites with lots of traditional employment opportunities. And lots of fallback options when I was initially thinking about coaching from 2010 to 2012.

Those options were keeping me from fully committing to coaching.

One of those options turned into my last corporate job.

But things changed when we moved from Washington DC to Carbondale CO, a small mountain town near Aspen, in July of 2017.

There are no positions here that are anything like what I had access to in my old world.

Suddenly, the fallback was gone. And it was the best thing that ever happened to me.

A Willingness to Be Curious and Change Course

When I first got laid off, I thought I’d be a consultant.

Maybe I could coach part time, a good friend suggested, while building a consulting business.

I was known as a health care expert. I was confident that I could make it work there while I built my coaching chops.

But no one wanted to hire me as a consultant.

Even though I did get some interest from potential employers, I didn’t pursue them. I knew deep in my bones that my next thing was on my own.

I attended a coaching intensive a month after getting laid off. I hired my first coach, Rich Litvin, a few months after that. I did a lot of things differently than others were, because they felt right to me. I never coached for an hourly fee, instead waiting for more substantial engagements.

My first client was a senior executive who hired me in June of 2017. With some breaks, we worked together four years.

My first founder was a referral in late 2018 and we worked till the middle of 2023.

My second came shortly after and we worked through the sale of his company.

Even though I have coached some great senior executives along the way, there was something about founders, about their capacity to look deeply at themselves, to take risks, and to apply themselves over a period of years, that resonated with me.

Perhaps because, looking back, that has been my path, too.

I’ve moved from coaching executives to coaching founders to coaching second time founders to coaching people who have had exits and are wondering what is next. Not by design, but simply because that is where the path seems to have led me and that has been my clients journey, too.

I never planned any of it. (In fact, a lot of the stuff I thought would work failed miserably. That’s a whole different newsletter.)

What is Calling You?

As you look at a new year, maybe there has been something that has been calling you. With a quiet, but insistent voice that, to this point, you’ve been ignoring.

Maybe you tell it “someday,” or, “it’s just not practical right now” or, “it’s too risky.“ Maybe you ask yourself, “Who am I to think I could do that?”

Every day that passes without taking action, a little part of you dies.

Maybe you want to pursue a different career or start a business.

Maybe you’re already running a business, but you can’t quite seem create the next version even though the thrill is gone with this one.

Maybe you’ve sold a business and have no idea what is next for you.

Get quiet. Give yourself some space. And see what emerges.

Continuing the Conversation

One of the things I’m creating in 2025 is more opportunities for both individuals and small groups to spend time in that space where dreams emerge.

Watch this newsletter for more, and reach out in the meantime if you’d like to talk.

I’m creating a special email list just for this project and would love to include you.

Happy 2025.

I still think New Year’s Resolutions are flawed. Because they generally start from two misleading ideas.

The first is that there is something wrong with us.

The second is that we must do something about that. (Preferably while being hard on ourselves.)

I’m too heavy so I will resolve to lose weight.

I’m not active enough so I will resolve to exercise more.

I don’t work hard enough (or I work TOO hard). So I will work more (or less)

All coming from the idea that there is something wrong with me and that I have to fix it. And the harder I can be on myself, the more successful I can be in the “fixing.”

In other words if only I hate myself enough, I can create something I love.

How has that worked for you?

Cue more self-hate. You can’t even meet your own goals!

What’s wrong with you?

You Will Never Reach Your Potential

As a chronic stressed-out overachiever, I discovered this decades ago.

No matter how much I do, there is always more that I CAN do.

No matter how many goals you check off the list, more appear. You will always be able to do more, and to do what you do better and faster.

Most people see this and then feel bad about “not living up to their potential” or some other nonsense.

And they beat themselves up for not doing more, instead of congratulating themselves for how far they have come.

I can remember times when I have screamed in frustration at myself, pounded my steering wheel as I was driving home from work at my apparent inability to be perfect, to do more than I was already doing, to do what I was doing faster and better.

To prove myself.

It seems silly now.

Self-Hatred is Unsustainable

Who was it I was trying to prove myself to? What would happen when I actually did that?

My clients will insist that they need to “prove themselves.”

Set a big goal and meet it to “prove yourself,” whether that’s to yourself or to some idea you have about what your parents or your peers or the teacher who doubted you or “the haters” think.

Athletes are masters at this “chip on your shoulder” method of motivation.

There are only two problems with this approach.

The first is that it works for some people. So you feel there must be something wrong with you if it doesn’t work for you (e.g., that resolution you’ve had for last six years).

Second, even when it works, it’s not very enjoyable. After a while, you have to keep making up slights and faults and issues, with yourself and others, as a way of being hard enough on yourself to keep playing.

You don’t enjoy the process and you don’t enjoy it very long when you actually meet one of your goals. You really want to stop, but you’re afraid it will all fall apart if you do. That, as one client of mine said, you’ll just “eat bonbons all day” if you don’t have your own self hate to keep you going.

That you will “lose your edge.”

What if There’s Nothing Wrong with You?

Most of my clients have shared with me that they are way more successful than they ever thought they would be.

On the one hand, they feel incredible gratitude for how far they have come and what they have been able to create in the world—

Resources.

Relationships.

Their own growth and personal development.

On the other, they see how much more is possible. And in seeing that, they make a critical mistake.

They measure themselves based on their potential rather than their accomplishments.

But the flaw in this is simple.

You Are Made to Create

As one of my founders likes to say, “builders build.”

We are made to enjoy the process of creating, not to enjoy our creations.

We think there is something wrong with us, but this is how we are designed.

To never stop.

So don’t create something because you think having it will satisfy you. It won’t. Create something that you will enjoy the process of creating.

For some this is creating companies. But it can change over time, too.

I recently started learning the saxophone. There are times when practicing is not fun. But I keep going because of the moments of sheer bliss when I lose myself is the act. And the more I do it, the more becomes possible. It’s virtuous feedback loop.

The same has been true of my coaching for many years. The joy in seeing something that I have not seen before, or of my client doing the same, keeps both of us coming back, often for years.

Coaching, like other forms of creating, is an endless journey. Higher and higher on a mountain that has no top.

You will never be done creating. You will never be done wanting to create.

And that is the best possible news.

Another Way to Think about What You Want to Create in 2025

Once you see this, something amazing happens.

You stop creating to get somewhere or to prove something.

What you want to create might change in this process. But at the very least, WHY you are creating it will shift.

You might start to create from and with joy. And when you get out of the way, it might feel like something is calling you to be created. Or that something is wanting to emerge throughyou.

Honor that.

You might be surprised that the thing that wants to be created through you is the key to the joy you have been seeking all along.

What Wants You to Create It in 2025?

What if your New Year’s Resolution is actually to discover what is wanting to emerge, and to follow where it takes you?

Enjoy that question, enjoy the process, and enjoy the year. No matter where it leads.