Have you ever felt like you were not "yourself"?

I have come to realize ... I've not been myself.  

Honestly I've not been "myself" for a while.  

My old self was a corporate leader and the playbook in corporate (for me) was pretty standard.  Deliver, get paid well ...  rinse and repeat.  

In 2014, armed with determination, I took a chair elsewhere.  And for four years I've toiled over this vision to fix what's broken in our industry around women, culture, inclusion, and the transformation we're in to move to the next generation of fuels and people.  I've tried, tested, reset, revised, tweaked, and finally I'm in a place I feel is good to scale what we've built.

But to take this to the next level, I also realized I've got to level up and raise my game.  

This playbook AIN'T corporate.   

It doesn't mean I cannot be who I am.  It means that the chair I've now chosen requires different skills.  I've got to do things I've NOT done before that other people did for me.  It means that it doesn't matter that I ran millions of dollars in budgets and flew the world in first class because it was policy. I'm now the CEO of a small company with a different set of challenges.  I don't have teams of 20 to solve problems, an IT person to fix my stuff when it blows up or a finance person to tell me what I should spend or not.  And of course I fly coach now, because it's what I can afford.

It's not that it took 4 years to know this.  I knew when I left the comforts of corporate I would face immense challenges.  But I'm starting to see how I respond and make decisions and how I need to fine tune that or I will be the only thing in my own way.

So I'm learning to cope with what I need to become.

Tonight I phoned up a friend of ours to ask for his insights.  Jason Korman is the founder of Gaping Void.  We're now doing work together. You've probably seen some of it.  Our EDII (study) and the GRIT Awards... It's a real honor because I have admired his thinking and work for almost a decade. He's an experienced entrepreneur and been at this gig way longer than I've been.  I trust him and his feedback has been invaluable. During our conversation, he stopped me mid-sentence and asked...

"What do you think the biggest thing is that an entrepreneur needs"?

I answered GRIT (of course).  He said ... "Yes.  Courage". He then said the most profound thing.  It's something I think we can all embrace. 

"Entrepreneurship is having courage and staying focused on delivering the unknown every day."

WOW.

In the corporate chair, I liked to help people make light out of dark, order out of chaos and solve problems with real solutions.  I had a cushion or two. Time was on my side!  If we screwed up, very few noticed.  From a financial perspective, if we blew money, it was a blip on the chart of accounts.   And let's face it, I didn't have to take the same approach EVERY DAY.  I could slack off, especially during the holidays.

That's not the same in this chair.  

Some days it is so dark, I feel as though I'm running at night not knowing what pothole I might step in. And if I step in it, how will that impact the road I've paved? I've come to realize that how I navigate the unknown now is different.  The resources are scarce and there's more at stake.  

Jason says ... the key to the unknown is having unwavering courage. The courage to keep going.  The courage to show up, try harder, learn, fail, and accept the beauty of all of these things.  For most, he says, don't touch any of it.  They run from it because it someone else's problem to solve.  

So I am convinced all of you have it within you to muscle up your courage to focus on delivering the unknown, whatever that may be.   

Are you flying blind in the night enjoying the ride galloping over the possible potholes?  Or are you laying low where its safe?  How are you embracing the unknown with your courage?

It's your turn...Courage is ....