A lot of my friends and clients look at my coaching business and my career and say they see nothing but straight predictable lines. They see a 30-year corporate career and an easy transition into coaching CEOs and senior executives when my position was eliminated in 2016.
What they don’t see is that my first impulse was to go into consulting, and it took a good friend to remind me that I was passionate about coaching before I even considered trying to do it full time.
What they don’t see is two years of struggling with confidence about IF I could help someone, let alone WHO I could help and HOW to talk to them about it.
What they don’t see is the sleepless nights I spent thinking about my rapidly depleting savings and when (and how) I would have to find a “real” job.
What they don’t see is the hard conversations I had with my wife, my panic bubbling underneath the calm, confident exterior.
What they don’t see is the crippling fear I had that my business was going to completely dry up at the beginning of the pandemic.
What they don’t see is that even today I track how many months of savings I have.
Doing something new is terrifying. Most people don’t fail. They just don’t stick it out long enough.