The past several weeks have been very eventful around here (hence the lack of updating). They have led to a couple of really powerful revelations that I’ve been working through, as I have been trying to get my feet under me in the new job.
I’ve spent so much of the past year writing about life as an entrepreneur that I was a little surprised to finally come to the realization that, no matter how hard I try, I am actually not one. At least not at this point in my life, anyway. And, ironically, there was no real way for me to know this until I tried to do it and then went back to working for someone else.
My first week at my new job, I flew to San Francisco (Yay!) to spend most of the first week in the office. It took about two hours of me being there to be deliriously happy. And not for the steady paycheck, or the socialization of working around other people again, or even being home for a visit. What made me happy was getting to focus on doing what I do, instead of the business of what I do.
I realized that I am the classic E-Myth example: I am the woman who loved baking pies, so she opened a pie baking business… only to grow miserable at having to run a business instead of baking pies. And the moment I started working for someone else, all of a sudden, I found myself able to focus on what I do again.
I have made such a career out of multi-tasking that it never occured to me that, under certain conditions, I simply couldn’t do it. Multi-tasking at a task-level is one thing; multi-tasking at a higher level — e.g. working in my business and working on my business — has proven to me to be something else entirely. Even crazier was, that I didn’t realize it until I stopped. Over the past two years, I’d grown so accustomed to feeling the pressure of owning and running my own business that it wasn’t until I shed myself of it that I realized it was suffocating me. And as soon as the business of the business became someone else’s problem and I got to go back to being a specialist, suddenly not only could I focus again, but I could also BREATHE.
I spent four days in San Francisco taking ridiculously deep breaths, feeling my lungs fill with the cool Pacific air, feeling the oxygen rush through my bloodstream and generally feeling a sense of relief that only comes from being confined in cramped quarters for too long, and suddenly feeling the rush of fresh air as you step into sunlight. It was like taking off the tight dress clothes after an over-the-top Thanksgiving dinner: all of a sudden, your lungs instantly feel capable of working again.
This realization was fascinating to me for another reason, as well. I’d lost touch with something in myself over the past two years — thanks to the ego pounding of not being able to find a job, the emotional roller coaster of not knowing what I wanted to do for a living anymore, the isolation of working from home, and the increasingly frequent homesickness I’d been unable to shake. I lost the confidence I’ve always had in my ability to tackle damn near anything.
There was a great line in the movie “Julie & Julia” where Julia Child is writing to her friend while living in France and attending cooking school at Le Cordon Bleu. She says that, despite being surrounded entirely by male classmates and a headmistress who can’t stand her, she discovered something key about herself that she’d never known before: she was fearless.
That was always me. Until I ran my own business. And, while I’m sure that if the circumstances around starting the business had been more empowering and less desperate, things could have been different. In the end, for me running my own business managed to obliterate my sense of fearlessness. Even worse, I didn’t know it until my second day back to work for someone else.
My husband — who is an entrepreneur to his core — asked me how my trip was going. I felt guilty. From the time we’d met, he’d always discussed us having our own business. And while the idea never held any appeal to me, I didn’t ever really say anything, because that was his dream and I didn’t want to quash it. But sitting in the office in San Francisco I knew the time had come.
I told him that I felt awkward about telling him, but the truth was, I knew this is where I was supposed to be. I knew this was what I was supposed to be doing. And I felt myself finding my sea legs almost immediately… and that once I had them back, it was now clear that what had been holding me back wasn’t just the market or my directional challenges or the nature of my work making it hard to work alone. What had been holding me back was the fact that I was really one of Cinderella’s step-sisters, and that no matter how hard I tried, her shoe simply didn’t fit.
The image that popped into my head later was that of a hunting dog. (Leave it to a dog person to resort to canine metaphors, I realize.) I don’t want to own the estate. I just want to hunt. But as a business owner, it was my responsibility to tend the land, manage the horses, pay the taxes and hire the staff — all that before anyone gets to load the rifle. You know what? That’s not me. I’m a hunting dog. And I’m better at it than most.
But if I have to spend my time and energy on things that I’m not good at and that I don’t like and which I do not feel are worth the effort that they require for the benefit I get out of it, then all of a sudden, I’m trying to turn the hunting dog into an accountant — which is absolutely absurd and counter-productive. I make a hell of a hunting dog — if I can focus on the hunt.
And I realized that’s what I have now. I have an extremely entrepreneurial company — which is the kind that I like — with tons of opportunity, blue oceans all around us, and a need for a multi-faceted, slightly ADD, very hungry hunting dog. My new CEO recognized that immediately. And the reason I wanted the job immediately is because I saw it, too.
So, do I regret the past two years? Yes and no. I regret what I’ve put my husband through. He’s put up with a lot as I’ve been on a roller coaster that I didn’t understand how to get off of, and I put him through the ringer on more than one occassion by doing everything 180 degrees opposite from what he needed me to do just for him to be able to sleep at night. I am sorry for the ulcers, the fights, the aggravation and the anxiety I caused because, for an articulate person, I couldn’t find the words to express what was wrong, what I needed or how I was feeling.
On the other hand, I spent since early 2008 — long before we left New York — miserable, not knowing what I wanted to be doing, not enjoying anything about work, and questioning everything I thought I was supposed to be doing with my life. That confusion followed me to Texas and cursed our business from the moment we started it. And so the sudden shock of clarity feels amazing — much better than it could have ever felt if I’d never been lost in the first place.
So, whether I identify as a hunting dog or Cinderella’s step-sister… it doesn’t matter. The fact is, I’m back to being me again. And the part of me that I like, who loves her job, who feels capable of contributing again, and who can be comfortable saying, “I am not an entrepreneur — but I sure as hell love working with them!”
And being married to one.
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