I was talking to a founder yesterday and asked him what he thought made him different. Why he was taking the road less travelled, toward starting his own thing rather than becoming an employee of someone else.

He talked a bit about being stubborn, about not being good at following orders, about instinctively challenging authority.

But then he got quiet.

“I guess if I could identify one thing, it’s that I have this faith that I can figure things out.”

YES.

There is a huge difference between having knowledge and having the capacity to know.

Between what you have already learned and knowing that you can learn.

YOU are not what you have learned. YOU are the inherent capacity to learn.

YOU are not your history. YOU are the capacity to create your future.

Any future you want.

Knowing that, knowing that you are not limited by, or beholden to, what has happened to you, what you have done, the choices you used to make, what do you choose next?

What will you choose to create when you finally see you have that choice?

One of the reasons I like working with founders is that their drives, their desires, are very similar to my own.

To do something that is important.

To have an impact.

To be true to their values and vision rather than someone else’s.

To make the world a better place.

To provide generously for themselves and others in the process.

But our society, our culture, both glamorizes and ruthlessly punishes founders.

“I don’t want a nation of thinkers, I want a nation of workers,” John D. Rockefeller famously said while he was helping to create our public education system.

Founders are thinkers. The people who see the need for something different and then commit to creating it.

Founders are the people who instinctively question reality rather than comply with it.

Founders must constantly commit to their vision while everyone around them challenges them, telling them it isn’t practical, it will never work, they need a backup plan.

Founders must lead rather than follow.

Founders make horrible employees. They question everything.

Being a founder is not for the faint of heart. It will tempt you and then test you. You will learn more about yourself in the process than you ever wanted to.

But if it is in your blood, nothing else will satisfy you.

I post a lot about founders and CEOs, because most of my clients are one or the other.

But you are a founder, too. You are founder and CEO of a company called YOU, Inc.

It might have one customer (aka your employer). It might have several if you are in business for yourself.

It is something you have created, you have nurtured, and now you realize the fruit from. Whether that fruit is ripe or has gone bad. Every day you get to decide, is “YOU, Inc.” the company you want it to be, or do you want to create something different?

Either way, you are the one creating it. And how you have created it and what you say about it will tell everything you need to know about yourself and what you believe, both about yourself and about life.

Take a moment and look at this. And then ask yourself—

What do you want to create today?

I was just talking with one of my clients who is in that really special place that successful founders must all face.

The space between small company and big company.

The space between control and growth.

The space between managing and leading.

Like many leaders I have worked with, my client has hired a lot of the wrong people for what he needs now. And he has been the wrong leader for what he needs now.

When you are staring a business it is your baby. All of it. You’re worried about the baby making it to its first birthday. And then its second.

But just like a human baby, at some point your business baby begins to have its own opinions. It naturally wants to grow, and sometimes that growth is in ways that you didn’t anticipate.

If you want that growth, you have to be willing to see that your employees, your customers, even your suppliers might know better than you.

You might have to create and hold a container of disagreement, conflict even, to determine what is the best path for everyone. The best way to support your baby as it grows into the best version of itself.

A lot of inconsistent desires can arise in the process. This client, for example, said two contradictory things to me in the span of two minutes—

“I don’t want to be involved.”

“I don’t trust people to make the right decisions.”

And the work for him will be creating himself as a leader who does not need to be involved, AND who trusts his people to make the right decisions.

In that process, he will create both himself and the people he leads. He will decide if he wants to be the smartest person in the room, or to lead people who are smarter than he is.

The long-term success of the business could hinge on that choice.

What will you decide?