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I started my business in 1998, out of a one-bedroom, fifth-floor walk-up apartment. My dream was to build a multimillion-dollar global management consulting firm filled with consultants, trainers, and coaches who would help people lead, manage, work, and live more successfully. A big dream.
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Meanwhile, I had no clients and my company’s only physical asset was a single computer. I survived on my savings for the first six months as I tried to build the business with little success. I didn’t have enough work to sustain myself, let alone a team of consultants.
Then I won a large contract with a well-known investment bank. This was my big break, the project I could use to build my business. I needed to quickly assemble a team—six consultants at first and then, if all went according to plan, fifty more. I remember sitting in my two-hundred-square-foot living room/dining room/kitchen with Eleanor, my girlfriend, filled with the excitement of possibility and the trepidation of the test; could I pull this off?
I brought in an initial team who did a tremendous job meeting the client’s expectations. Then, as the project expanded, so did the team. From New York to Chicago, San Francisco, Paris, London, Tokyo, and Hong Kong. And as the team expanded, so did my client base.
I had built my dream company in an unimaginably short period of time. It was everything I had hoped for, everything I had planned for.
That first year, I ended up making more money than I had in the previous three combined. The second year, I doubled that, and by the third year, I began to fantasize about retiring within the decade.
And yet, in the midst of all this success, I realized there was one thing I hadn’t planned for: my happiness.
Somehow, I was missing that feeling of I’m doing the right things with the right people in the right way to make the most of who I am. At the time, I didn’t know why and I was too busy to figure it out. Plus, everything seemed to be working just fine; why mess with success? So I kept doing what I was doing.
Then everything crashed; the dotcom revolution, the financial services industry, the demand for consulting, and, with it, my business.
By that time, Eleanor and I were married, Isabelle had been born, and we were in a tough spot. Bills were accumulating and my income was rapidly shrinking. I was stressed, but I also had a strange and quiet sense of relief. Now I began to fantasize, not of retiring, but of doing something else completely. Of reclaiming my life.
So I took acting classes, considered applying to medical school, actually applied to rabbinical school, started a phantom investment fund (with play money to see if I liked it, and if I was good at it), and continued to consult on my own. I was searching.
I slowed down my activity, reversed my forward momentum, paused before making choices, took more time off, and let my mind wander. I began to look more carefully at myself—at the world around me—and I began to notice hidden sides of me that felt unused, sub-optimized. I began to feel a growing power within me. A sense of untapped potential.
I wasn’t yet sure what that potential was, but I was absolutely certain that it was worth cultivating. So I kept experimenting, kept noticing.
I had, in effect, pressed my FIND ME button. And when I did, I was thrown into the sky and offered a bird’s-eye view of my world.
What I saw—what the pausing and the noticing and the recognizing enabled me to see—was that while I had gotten off track, I wasn’t far off, and there was a safe way back down. I saw the path that would help me reclaim my life and allow me to bring my whole self into my work and my life. To spend my time on the things that mattered to me, the things I was good at, the things I enjoyed.
But I’m getting ahead of myself here. Because now, in part 1 of 18 Minutes, you’re about to be thrown into the air. You need that bird’s-eye view. And to get it, you need to tap the FIND ME button, and then pause, as you let yourself fly high and hover above your world, preparing to land exactly where you want to be.
