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?

I love the idea, central to some religious faiths, of being “born again.”

The idea that we can, in a moment, become a new person.

Take on a new identity.

I have found, even outside of a religious context, this is not only possible, but often necessary.

As a consultant, I became a different person than I was as a lawyer. As a manager, I also had to be different. Leading client relationships, I had to be different. As a board member, different.

And as a coach, I have to be different. With every change, my old behaviors were no longer useful. Even in my coaching, as who I coach has changed, who I show up as to coach them changes.

Each of these things has felt like a kind of death to me. A transformation. That death, that willingness to let go of a former self, is the only way to get to what’s on the other side.

While it might feel scary, it is also necessary.

What is your current identity keeping you from? What if you declared today, in this moment even, to take on a new identity?

To die and be reborn as the person you always wanted to be? As the person who will do what you’ve always wanted to do?

 

I’m not saying that as a playground taunt. It’s a serious question.

Because as much as you say you want change, you want more, you want to go after your dream, there is generally some kind of fear that prevents you from going after it. From taking the leap of faith.

You can do this, though. So many before you have. I have.

I had been saying I wanted to be a full-time coach for years. But I didn’t actually do it until I lost my job. I was too afraid of giving up the job that I had, until I no longer had it.

What is the fear that is getting in the way of you going after the thing you really want?

—Fear of not being liked
—Fear of being laughed at
—Fear of financial uncertainty
—Fear of something else?

Look at that fear. Is it real?

I’ve worked with so many leaders who say they fear “losing everything” or “being out on the streets” or “having all their good people leave.”

I have never talked to a single leader who has actually had any of those experiences, as real as the fear seems.

You will figure it out. You have always figured it out.

Whether that is starting a new job or company, or taking the one you have to the next level.

You can do this because you already have.