Hold Nothing Back

I once had the pleasure of meeting three super smart executives from a global data firm; a CEO, his COO and the Head of Global Strategy. Their mission: to provide data-powered insights through a proprietary platform. Ridiculously exciting work.

The tale of how I came to meet this amazing group of entrepreneurs, is a new story in serendipity, surrender and staying committed to letting whatever you experience make its way through you and letting whatever is in you, make its way out. A markedly new narrative which came to replace the old self who would have hesitated at this opportunity, would minimized two decades of her hard earned experience and instead would have cornered herself under the guise of not having the right credentials or industry connections to make her voice worthy of being heard.

Everything changed when I received an email through LinkedIn from a connection wanting to speak with me about his new project. In preparing for our meeting, and even going in to the conversation that day I was unsure as to the level of detail I would go into with him regarding my work and background and whether it would be prudent to share - in addition to my twenty years of corporate management experience -  my forays into 'garage band' startups and micro food services business.

What most of my colleagues don't know about me is that at one time I had been the lead singer of a rock cover band, I've written two books, led a caravan of camels through the Sahara desert, flown a Cessna over Annapolis Navy Stadium, owned a catering business, a restaurant and bootstrapped a kid's transportation services company (among other businesses) -- all while holding down full time technology infrastructure or project management jobs and raising three kids.

I'd come to think of these experiences as too personal, or informal to have any value to a colleague or relevance to my current field of work and whenever someone asked "So, tell me about yourself?" I would stick to the corporate script. Recently, however, I decided that this larger body of work - which for the longest time I had kept in the margins - belonged in the main narrative. I decided that the things I had learned, and the experience I had gained through them was just as, if not more, valuable than any corporate offsite. I decided that I had nothing to lose and everything to gain by making all of my work visible, that including those "outside" experiences was part of staying true to the core of who I was as a well rounded professional, more than any resume could. I decided that those experiences spoke volumes to what ingenuity, discipline and resolve I could bring to any client, project or organization.

You get to a point where the old story, the same results, the mundane activities become unbearable - or at least I do. I get antsy, I crave disruption, I eat change for breakfast and can ride shifting paradigms with one hand tied behind my back, standing on one leg, in my sleep. It isn't all moving parts though, you still need regimen, rigor and order. Without a framework, shifts can go awry. What I mean to illustrate here though, is that steady for the sake of safety and sameness, can be the death of any career, candidacy or [project].  

My conversations with the three geniuses about their new project was incredibly satisfying, resulting in a new set of relationships which I think will pay dividends for years to come. I did end up sharing with them all the bits and details of what it was like to help a small company in New Orleans work to get their product onto the shelves of Whole Foods, how I'd mentored a burgeoning natural hair care startup into a global brand success, how I'd pitched a kid's car service (Uber, before Uber was Uber) to an investor in 5 minutes and raised $50,000, how I'd used the idea of reintroducing 'real food' to secure my own storefront in one of Baltimore's hottest revitalization zones.

I shared what I'd learned, that the challenges I encountered along the way were universal and that things like change management, empathetic leadership and speed to market were true for the smallest startup to the largest organizations in the world.

To say that these twenty years writing my story and developing my professional brand was easy, or linear or formulaic would be far from the truth. At each pivotal juncture, there has been a series of questions I ask myself as I swim away from the edge of the pool and head for the deep end. What do you really want? What really matters to you? What would you fight to get? What would you be willing to give up to get it?

The answer is always unique to the timing of my life at the moment, but the common element is that in the moment of decision I dared enough to embrace my constraints as inspiration, dared enough to recognize and transcend my habitual thought and emotional patterns, thought about what role my emotions played in my motivation and finally - imagined myself in the new story.

Eventually, I couldn't deny how good the new story felt and realized that it wasn't worth holding back anymore. So I let go.  

“Come to the edge," he said.
"We can't, we're afraid!" they responded.
"Come to the edge," he said.
"We can't, We will fall!" they responded.
"Come to the edge," he said.
And so they came.
And he pushed them.
And they flew.”
― Guillaume Apollinaire