I Left My Dream Job, In The Middle Of A Global Pandemic, During Record Unemployment… and Why You Should Care

“Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth” -Mike Tyson

Mike Tyson was, of course, talking about boxing, but sometimes it’s not about a punch in the mouth. Sometimes, 7,000 miles away, someone comes in contact with the wrong bat at the wrong market, and before you know it you find yourself unemployed and out of toilet paper. 

I’m not unemployed (or out of TP thankfully), but I am leaving Flowfold, and my point is simple- that was NEVER part of the plan. But then again, neither was 2016. And neither was moving to Austin. But we’ll get to that. 

I sat down with a simple task- announce my departure from Flowfold. But of all the times I’ve written, I’ve never stared at a blinking cursor for so long. 

How do you start something like that? 

Flowfold IS James. 

James IS Flowfold. 

Business brand and personal brand interwoven into a fabric of truth and purpose. How do you even begin to unweave that? In many ways, to depart from Flowfold would be to depart from myself. Who knows, maybe that was the point. 

So I sat there, looking for words, crippled by fear and guilt until I allowed myself to feel vulnerable. Finally, at that moment, it became clear to me- I wasn’t writing about why I was leaving Flowfold. I was writing about chaos, the inevitability of change, and the courage it takes to embrace it. And that’s when words began to appear. 

Perhaps it’s best to start at the beginning. 2016 was the most difficult year of my life and I’ve gone on record, in fact on stage, talking about this. Like the armor my heroes wore, the foundation that I had built my life upon was cracked. Everything I knew, all the comforts I had been used to, were stripped away and as a result, I rebelled. I rebelled against everything I had known because everything that I had known had rebelled against me. I grew my hair out, I got some questionable tattoos, and I went against almost all of the guidance I had from my friends and mentors to join a bootstrapped startup in a “dying” retail industry. 

For the record, I’m grateful for 2016.

It was a year of immense personal chaos and from that chaos came change. From that chaos came Flowfold. And it changed my life. It taught me the value of enjoying the process vs simply chasing down the outcome. It took me around the world, to Singapore, New Zealand, Germany, & Japan and almost killed me on Mt. Kilimanjaro. But most importantly, it introduced me to the most amazing human beings I’ve ever had the privilege of working with. Charley, Devin, Nick, Max, Kat, Marlena, Elizabeth, Kelsy… they became my new heroes. They became my new foundation.

Call it fate or call it coincidence, but once again I find myself leaving everything I know. And once again I find myself in the midst of an incredibly difficult year and one of immense chaos. But not personal difficulties, and not personal chaos. No, this time the world is in chaos. At the time of my writing this, over 4 million people have been diagnosed with the novel coronavirus and nearly 300,000 people have lost their lives worldwide. In the United States alone 33 million people have filed jobless claims and we have a shuttered and decaying economy the likes of which we’ve never seen before.

So why now? Why now have I decided to rebel against comfort in the middle of chaos? There are, of course, some practical and logical reasons. 

For starters, I believe in where I’m going. I believe I’ll be working with another group of high character human beings for a company with values I support. I believe I will find new heroes and a new foundation and I believe I’ll be supporting my partner which, in itself, is all the reason I need. But ultimately, the reason lies within the problem. As much as we want to say that these are “unprecedented times”, they aren’t.

Chaos isn’t unprecedented.

Chaos is constant. 

In fact, it’s the only guarantee you have in life. It’s the one thing you can truly count on. And the only variable YOU can control is how you react. It’s not always easy. I won’t lie to you and tell you it is. But what I can tell you, what I promise to you now, is that it’s worth it. It’s always worth it. 

Jerzy Gregorek, a Polish man who went from being an alcoholic to winning four World Weightlifting Championships once said,

“Easy Choices, hard life. 

Hard choices, easy life.”

But surely that’s easier said than done. So what steps can we all take to lower the barrier for hard choices? For me, it all comes down to fear.

1) Acknowledge Your Fears

2) Practice Fear Setting

3) Have A Bias Towards Action 

So at a time when everyone's lives have permanently changed, why should you care about mine? Why should you care about me voluntarily leaving a job when so many others did so against their will? Because leaving my job and my family is hard. Life is hard. And if I'm being honest, I didn't write this for you. I wrote this as a reminder to myself- a written affirmation that I'm ready, I'm capable, and that I'm going to be OK. But my HOPE is that when you encounter chaos in your life (and you will encounter chaos in your life) that you take these principles and summon the courage to make the hard choice. Because YOU are also ready, YOU are also capable, and YOU are going to be OK.

1) Acknowledge Your Fears

Fear Or Guilt… 

They are likely the reason you’re in a toxic relationship, stuck at a job you hate, or in a city you can’t stand. Or maybe it’s more trivial than that- the reason you haven’t given up on a book you don’t like, or why you ordered from an unappetizing menu. 

Fear Or Guilt...

If you want to feel vulnerable, ask yourself those simple questions. 

“What haven’t I done because I’m scared?” 

“What haven’t I done because I feel guilty?” 

I’m scared about leaving Flowfold. I’m terrified of letting my new CEO down. I’m riddled with self-doubt and insecurities. And of course I feel guilty. I’m leaving my team in the middle of a pandemic, in the middle of a crisis, while we continue to pivot and scale the business to make hospital PPE. 

And that’s OK. I’m not telling you not to feel scared or feel guilty.

Real strength lies in controlling your emotions, not pretending they don’t exist.

It’s why NASA trained astronauts in one skill more than any other: the art of not panicking. And why John Glenn managed to become the first American to orbit the earth without his heart rate ever going above 100 bpm. 

Acknowledging the shackles of fear and guilt are the first steps in freeing yourself. 

2) Practice Fear Setting 

“we suffer more from imaginations than from reality.” -Seneca

If acknowledging your fear is step 1, then step 2 is undoubtedly to put it into perspective. 

We aren’t John Glenn and when it comes to decision making, most of us are living in luxury. Our choices are hardly life or death, and our fears, if unabated, are distracting at best, debilitating at worst. So then, how do we overcome them? Seneca had his ideas, but for this, I’ll call in support from a modern Storic, Tim Ferriss, whose TedTalk on fear setting has been viewed over 7.5 million times. 

He outlines a process of defining your fears vs your goals, and how you could use that as your superpower to “overcome self-paralysis and take action.” 

• Define — What is the worst thing that could happen?
• Prevent — How do I prevent this from happening?
• Repair — If the worst happens, how can I fix it?

Let’s circle back then. Earlier I said that I’m afraid of leaving Flowfold. In part because I’m afraid of having to start over and afraid of letting my new CEO and team down. Great, I've defined my fear. Now how can I prevent it? I can prevent it by doing everything I’ve done my entire life that has led to success. I can work hard, lean into what I’m good at, and ask for help when I need it. I can connect with those around me and build an army of people who will support me.

But what if that’s not enough? How can I repair from failure? As long as I failed with class, as long as I do things right, I’ll still have people who care about me. People who are willing to help me. There are always other opportunities. I’m not John Glenn. I’m not orbiting Earth. I WILL be ok. I can accept that. But what I can’t accept is not trying. I can’t look back at this opportunity and think about “What If?”. If I succumb to my fears I’ll never forgive myself. Which leads me to point #3. 

3) Have A Bias Towards Action 

“The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.”

 -Marcus Aurelius 

Because failure is natural, but regret is foolish.  

More often than not, our fears and anxieties keep us from stepping outside our comfort zones and it’s my contention that you are far more likely to regret NOT doing something as opposed to doing something. 

In my situation, I have to balance my fear of leaving Maine and being lonely with my fear of never leaving Maine at all. If I practice fear setting, it becomes overly apparent that I must take action. 

I know, without a shadow of a doubt, that I have within my power the ability to prevent the feeling of loneliness. And if my powers of 'extrovertedness' leave me, and Zoom calls with friends and family don’t fill the void, then I can always repair my actions by coming back home. 

But on the other hand, what actions can I take to prevent the regret of never leaving Maine at all? Will there be recourse when I'm 75, on my porch, sipping coffee in the same town I've been in for 50 years?

The answer is no. The fear isn’t balanced. Emotion is keeping me in Maine. The objective reality is that I must take action. I must go. 

Let me close with a statement

Flowfold is fine.

My departure from a company I have devoted so much to will undoubtedly shock some people. But I was wrong in the beginning. 

I am NOT Flowfold and Flowfold is NOT me.

In fact, Flowfold is in a healthy position and I’ve never been more confident that they will come out of the COVID_19 pandemic stronger than ever. Because Flowfold not only survived amidst the chaos, they excelled. They did this because they built a culture around flexibility and being agile. A culture and team built on a foundation of accountability and hard work. They own every step of the process, from design, to production, to sales and marketing- all under one roof in Gorham, Maine. That culture allowed them to pivot to making face shields for healthcare workers in 8 days. It was THAT culture took them from making 1,000 face shields per week to 100,000 shields per week when our community and country needed them the most. And in 8 weeks it was THAT team which sold almost a million units of a product that didn’t exist 60 days before. And THAT culture and THAT team aren’t going anywhere. 

As for me, I am going somewhere. 

And I’m scared. But I can’t control what happens next. If 2020 has taught us anything, it’s that we don’t have any control at all. Other than how we respond. How we perceive obstacles in front of us. How we treat the people around us- and not just those we love, but those we don’t even know. The character in which we live our lives, and the vigilance it takes to live each day like it’s your last. To live a life free of regret and not shackled by fear. THAT is what we have control over. 

“Some things are in our control and others not. Things in our control are opinion, pursuit, desire, aversion, and, in a word, whatever are our own actions. Things not in our control are body, property, reputation, command, and, in one word, whatever are not our own actions.”-Epictetus

I love you all. 

Thank you for your continued support of me and Flowfold.