I have a lot of memories of “first times” that were less than ideal.

Some of them, in fact, were horrible.

But here’s the thing.

If you are ever going to do something that you have never done before, you are going to have to do it a first time.

When’s The Last Time You Did Something For The First Time?

Last April, I started to play the alto saxophone.

I sang growing up but never learned an instrument. While learning an instrument can be tedious at times, for the most part I really enjoy it and I look forward to practicing.

Progress was slow but steady, and I found myself wanting a bit more. I had a buddy who was learning to play bass and we played together one Sunday.

Even though it was just random noise, it was fun.

He started taking lessons from the same guy who I was taking sax lessons from. (Convenient that we have someone who plays both professionally in our small valley.)

One thing led to another and soon our teacher, Kriss, had put together a five piece band. All men in their 50s, all less than a year into learning their instruments.

We started playing together in February.

About three weeks ago we were invited to play in a “School of Rock” style concert, consisting of six bands of kids, and us.

We said yes, not fully understanding what we were getting ourselves into.

Or at least I didn’t.

Every New Experience Is Different

I thought that performing in front of a crowd would not be a big deal for me.

After all, I’ve done a ton of public speaking, to audiences that were sometimes hundreds of people. This was a hundred or so parents of kids. How hard could it be, my mind told me.

My body had different ideas.

The first song was “10th Avenue Freeze Out” by Bruce Springsteen.

I botched my first line. The second was ok, but a bit squeaky. And then I botched the third.

I didn’t feel overly nervous, but my mouth was dry. While you can play the bass with a dry mouth, it absolutely affects what comes out of your saxophone.

It went downhill from there

I basically had an out of body experience where I was watching my mouth not doing what it needed to do, and then my fingers totally forgetting what they needed to do.

Actually, I’m not even sure what went wrong first.

On stage, under bright lights, I was feeling like I was letting my four bandmates down and embarrassing myself in the process.

For about a song and a half of our three song set, I struggled.

And then something shifted.

The Only Thing You Need From Your First Time

I got my feet under me. I felt like maybe I wasn’t going to die a humiliating death.

And I performed. From the end of the second song, “Just What I Needed” by The Cars, through my 16 measure solo to close “She Caught The Katy” by Taj Mahal, I was playing. Not quite in the zone playing, but good enough.

I ended strong. I felt good about it.

The goal of the first time is to survive it and want a second time.

In that sense, I succeeded.

Because I totally want to do this again.

Don’t Do This Your First Time

Your first time is unpredictable. Even if you think, “I’ve got this,” your body may have different ideas.

Don’t go after your ideal client the first time you do a client presentation.

Don’t go after your ideal board member.

Don’t go after your ideal investor.

These are make or break situations and you are already feeling pressure. Don’t add to it. Do some warm ups. Get in some reps.

But keep doing “first times.” All your growth is on the other side of them.

When’s Your Next First Time?

Let me know in the comments if I’ve inspired you to take on a “first time” and what that might look like for you.

And if you have a “first time” story that you’d like to share, I’d love to hear it.

Going Deeper

If you want to explore this in more depth, you’re not alone.

More and more founders like you are coming out of the spiritual closet and seeing their work, and what they want to create, as a vital personal journey to both abundance and meaning. To the joy of feeling alive and “on purpose.”

This is what I write about. For founders, for original thinkers, no matter where they are in their transformation.

The world needs YOU, in all your brilliance and imperfection.

If you are a founder wanting to scale and sell your company, there are three shifts in identity that can help you do so with twice the impact and half the stress. Take a look at this video.

You can subscribe to my YouTube channel here.

You can follow me on LinkedIn to make sure you never miss a post by hitting the bell on my profile.

I was feeling really down earlier this week because I saw something more fully that I hadn’t been aware of.

I’ve been trying to save everyone.

I take care of a lot of people in my life.

My family, my adult children, my mom.

My clients.

And while I see so much possibility for them, I also see that I need them to need me to get there.

I need to be the hero, to come in and save the day and get you what you want, what you need.

Does that make sense?

I say I want people to succeed, but if I am honest I want them to succeed WITH MY HELP.

My tools, my methodology, my way of seeing the world.

And that’s been getting in my way.

I’m wondering if it’s been getting in yours.

Going Deeper

If you want to explore this in more depth, you are not alone.

More and more founders like you are coming out of the spiritual closet and seeing their work, and what they want to create, as a vital personal journey to both abundance and meaning. To the joy of feeling alive and “on purpose.”

This is what I write about. For founders, for original thinkers, no matter where they are in their transformation.

The world needs YOU, in all your brilliance and imperfection.

If you are a founder wanting to scale and sell your company, there are three shifts in identity that can help you do so with twice the impact and half the stress. Take a look at this video.

You can subscribe to my YouTube channel here.

You can follow me on LinkedIn to make sure you never miss a post by hitting the bell on my profile.

As a high achiever, I notice a pattern.

I give myself a challenge. I meet the challenge. I find fleeting happiness in that challenge. I move to a different challenge.

I notice this with the people I hang out with, too.

I hang out with a group of high achievers. I learn what I can and quickly rise to the top of the group. I move to find a different group.

But I’ve noticed two things that I struggle with, and I’m wondering if the same might be true for you.

I Create People and Situations So That I Can Win

I was with a group of coaches this week and I have been coaching longer than most of them. I charge higher fees than most of them. In a lot of ways I am “more successful” than they are.

But this week I challenged myself to create every conversation as a gift, as something that I could learn from.

And I found there was so much richness in that room. That if I showed up as “I can learn from you,” rather than “Been there done that,” there was a world of new learning freshly available to me.

I came away from an intensive that I had attended for the first time in 2016 with a new perspective on what was available for me. With a new appreciation for the depth of work that was still available to me.

I could take this on as a lifelong journey rather than a check the box. Rather than, “Is that all there is?”

And I came back changed.

I Avoid Uncomfortable Rooms and Intimidating People

I feel like I’m pretty good at continually challenging myself.

But I’m really not.

Because I only take on challenges that I think I can meet. Things that look possible. Things that I can already see how I can get there.

As my coach said to me recently, “The only worthwhile challenge is the one that you have no idea how to do.”

How do I meet with people I have no idea if or how I can serve?

How do I serve them?

How do I get into more rooms that scare me?

What is it that I want that I have no idea how to get?

What Are You Avoiding Because It Scares You?

Does this resonate?

I confess I don’t know how to make this feeling go away.

For me or for you.

But I do know a lot more becomes available when I share it.

Let me know if that’s true for you, too.

Going Deeper

If you want to explore this in more depth, you are not alone.

More and more founders like you are coming out of the spiritual closet and seeing their work, and what they want to create, as a vital personal journey to both abundance and meaning. To the joy of feeling alive and “on purpose.”

This is what I write about. For founders, for original thinkers, no matter where they are in their transformation.

The world needs YOU, in all your brilliance and imperfection.

If you are a founder wanting to scale and sell your company, there are three shifts in identity that can help you do so with twice the impact and half the stress. Take a look at this video.

You can subscribe to my YouTube channel here.

You can follow me on LinkedIn to make sure you never miss a post by hitting the bell on my profile.

There’s been a lot written about “10xing” your company, most notably by Dan Sullivan and Dr. Benjamin Hardy in their book, “10x Is Easier Than 2x.”

For me, that book can be summarized by a single sentence on page 69—

[This founder] exhibits a quality that only the world’s top achievers do: the ability to rapidly accept a new identity.

The rest of the book gives great advice on what to do, but almost nothing on how to create and accept a new identity.

This is the work that I do.

Growing More By Doing Less

The founder challenge is that the very reasons they start a company—they have a better idea and they want to prove themselves—are the things that will get in the way of them growing the company.

As I see companies move from $1 million to 10 million to $100 million to $1 billion, I see the founder struggle with letting go.

Expertise

When the founder starts out, often they are doing everything, not because they want to, but because they have to.

As things grow and succeed, they become more confident in their own abilities, and they hesitate to let go of the very things that they didn’t want to do at first.

I was talking with a serial entrepreneur last week who took pride in being able to figure everything out. On top of having several ideas that are in various stages of company formation, he has built several houses and he laughed at me for hiring a plumber to fix my shower.

“I can do anything,” he said proudly.

“Yes, but you can’t do everything,” I replied.

His ability to figure everything out was the very thing that was keeping any of these ideas, at least so far, from succeeding.

Decisions

As a company grows in size it also grows in complexity.

But owners can often feel like, even after they have hired people with deeper expertise—in sales, in finance, IT, product, legal, HR—that they still need to make the final decisions.

The founder becomes a bottleneck to growth.

It can feel risky and uncomfortable to let others make decisions.

A business owner client of mine told me at one point, “I feel like I am the thing that is getting in the way of becoming a bigger company.”

This is what he was referring to.

Hiring

Many of the founders that I work with are involved in (at first) every hire, and later, every “key” hire.

Most of them rely on instinct, “fit,” and other hard-to-define metrics.

And, if examined dispassionate, most of them are bad it.

They hire the wrong people too quickly, and then then fire the very same people too slowly. They think if only they spent more time with them, they could “save” them. They feel like they let the person down.

Hiring is simply another key area where the founder should delegate to those who have deeper expertise.

Should the founder meet with key people before they are hired? Absolutely. Should the founder make the final decision? In most cases, no.

Culture and Vision

The last things that most founders hold onto are culture and vision.

Culture, in most organizations, is modeled, sometimes unconsciously, by the founder. It will change as the organization grows, but if the founder believes that a collaborative culture is critical, they can continue to reinforce that to resist the “silos” that can emerge as a company grows.

To survive, culture needs to be made explicit.

The same is true for vision.

Vision is more than simply product/market fit.

Vision is WHY the company exists.

Vision is WHY people join the company, and sometimes, why people leave.

Vision and culture are how companies like Apple can continue to grow and succeed. The impact of vision and culture are the legacy of what Steve Jobs built, even more than ten years after his death.

If the founder wants to hold onto the company, their leadership around culture and vision is critical. And if the founder wants to sell, they have to realize that they will need to let go of culture and vision as well.

A Series Of Small Deaths

Every step of the way, the founder has to let go of things that have been, to that point, critical to the founder’s identity.

Their expertise, their decision-making, their need to control.

What do you need to let go of?

It can be very uncomfortable. It can look like it is “other people” who have the problem. But I assure you, it’s you.

If this feels uncomfortable, let’s talk.

Going Deeper

If you want to explore this in more depth, you are not alone.

More and more founders like you are coming out of the spiritual closet and seeing their work, and what they want to create, as a vital personal journey to both abundance and meaning. To the joy of feeling alive and “on purpose.”

This is what I write about. For founders, for original thinkers, no matter where they are in their transformation.

The world needs YOU, in all your brilliance and imperfection.

If you are a founder wanting to scale and sell your company, there are three shifts in identity that can help you do so with twice the impact and half the stress. Take a look at this video.

You can subscribe to my YouTube channel here.

You can follow me on LinkedIn to make sure you never miss a post by hitting the bell on my profile.

If you want to subscribe to this Creating Extraordinary Futures newsletter, you can do so here.