🥳 Hey, Kasey here! Welcome to this week’s 🏔High Growth Founders🏔 newsletter.
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Support a Founder — Support Yourself
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Gift yourself, or a friend, colleague, or cofounder, the luxury of delegated self-care.
In This Issue:
Growth Insight: Half a Year and Half a Life Are Over
Growth Event: Check out the FounderUp Midyear Check-Up
Two High Growth Founders Episodes of the Week:
Interview with Aljolynn Sperber and Rachael Kim of MyComma
How to Become Future You
Growth Resource I Love: The biggest personal and business investment I’ve made in years
Thank you and some news…
Growth Insight of the Week:
It’s July, 2022. Half the year is officially over.
After 2020 and much of 2021 seemed to progress at a snail’s pace, 2022 has felt like a rocket ship through time.
If you’re like most of us, what you think about come July is summer vacations, barbecues, picnics, and trips to the beach.
You’re ready to slow down and bask in some sunshine.
I wholeheartedly encourage you to do that.
But I also encourage you to slow down in a way that empowers you to speed up when you’re ready.
This requires not simply slowing down to distract yourself but slowing down to reflect.
As a Founder, now is an ideal time to check in and get a little introspective.
Have you achieved the goals you had in mind in January?
Why or why not?
What would make you feel this year had been a success?
How can you change your habits, routine, or process to make the second half better than the first?
Where do I need to invest in my personal development in order to achieve my goals for 2022?
If the future-you who has achieved all your goals for 2022 could give present-you any advice, what would they say?
I know this kind of reflection is often reserved for the new year, but evaluating your progress and adjusting your plans can substantially improve your long-term results.
July has always been an ideal time for me to reflect on the past year and the year to come because it’s not just the midway point in the calendar year, but it’s also my birthday, so it’s a yearly transition in a different sense for me.
And this year is a big one. 40.
This July feels like a time to reflect not just on half a year being complete, but half a lifetime also.
Last week I returned from a two-week vacation in Alaska with family. The time away — with limited cell reception and the slowest wifi I’ve experienced since my AOL dial-up days — provided ample time for introspection over my life thus far.
Have I achieved the goals I set for myself in the past year, five years, two decades?
Why or why not?
As I progress, what would make my life feel like one well-lived?
How can I change my habits, routine, or process to make the second half of this life better than the first?
If 80-year-old me, who has achieved all the goals and dreams I imagine for myself, could give 40-year-old me advice, what would she say?
As I dive deep into these questions, I have realized a few things about life and entrepreneurship.
#1. Play the long game.
Any time I have sacrificed the long-term for the short-term, I have regretted it. For much of my life, I’ve had this unnecessary urgency to show progress, meet milestones, and reach someone else’s standard of achievement. This always slowed my growth toward my ultimate goals.
Many times throughout my life, I attempt to force rapid progress. I skip steps. I try to engineer dizzying acceleration. But it rarely works.
And when it does work, I quickly find myself shooting off in a direction that doesn’t work for me. Suddenly my skin feels prickly with discomfort and the realization I am in the wrong environment, with the wrong people, working toward the wrong goals.
As this birthday approached, I recognized I have not made progress on my grand vision for myself because I am caught up in supporting the vision of others. Yes, that’s what I do, but I realize there must be a balance.
As I enter my 41st year on this Earth, my priority is to create space in my life to pursue my goals. Especially the ones that scare me.
Lesson learned: Now, I focus on moving slowly, intentionally, and on my long-term vision of what I want in my life.
#2. Clarity trumps motivation
I often say to Founders that confused people don’t buy. Confused people also don’t progress. Clarity in your vision, messaging, and sense of purpose matter more than perhaps anything else. But for many of us, clarity is elusive.
Life is a process of uncovering the training and behavioral conditioning we’ve adopted from our parents, society, and our social circle. For those of us that became people-pleasers or co-dependents, breaking down this social conditioning to discover the essential is a grueling process.
Too many times in my life, I worked hard to get closer to a particular goal only to realize once I had it — or was close — that I didn’t want it. It made me feel further from myself. It didn’t align with who I knew I was at my deepest core.
Attempting these pursuits, however, helped me realize that they weren’t right for me. They were part of my journey toward getting closer to my truest self.
Much of the way I learned what I wanted for myself was by doing the opposite and realizing it wasn’t right.
Lesson learned: Now, I do the work to slow down and create space for reflection and introspection, with the sole purpose being to better understand myself and what would bring true joy, satisfaction, and pride.
#3. Invest in relationships first
When I look back over my life about what brought the most joy, satisfaction, or reward, it was always the people.
When I worked to navigate healing from trauma, it was my friends, family, and therapist who helped me reclaim my life to thrive in a way I never thought possible.
Throughout my career, the most satisfying opportunities came not from advertisements or sales funnels, but from professional relationships, I had built and fostered over the years.
As I think about the life memories I treasure, they are not of places, possessions, or achievements, but of small, magical moments I shared with someone I love. Activities that became standout experiences.
Delicious meals where nothing in the world matters but our taste buds and laughter.
Winding walks down unfamiliar streets that pique our curiosity at every turn.
Long conversations where a few words make me feel as though I’ve been seen and heard for the first time.
Lesson learned: At every turn, it’s the people that matter. Don’t ignore building and nurturing the relationships that will ultimately outlast everything else in this life.
#4. Growth isn’t part of the journey. It is the journey.
I used to think someday I would reach an undefined threshold where I would feel like I knew what I was doing in life. That if I kept working on myself, growing as a person, evolving as a human, a professional, and an entrepreneur, I would eventually feel like I had it figured out.
Guess what?
I now know that’s bullshit. No one has it figured out. And anyone who acts as they do is good at pretending — to everyone else and perhaps themselves too.
You know how long-distance runners can destroy their chances of finishing a race by running too fast too early?
That was me believing eventually I could grow fast and far enough to ease up.
The goal of life isn’t to hustle until you reach a point and can coast. That point doesn’t exist.
Yes, you get more confident in handling what life throws your way. You become more comfortable with the inevitable discomfort of life’s constant ebbs and flows.
But growth never stops. Or at least it shouldn’t.
Lesson learned: I don’t need to race to the growth finish line. Because there is none. Reveling in the distance of it, pacing myself, is the way.
#5. Cultivate curiosity — always.
You might be noticing a theme here. You don’t have it all figured out. You don’t have to. If you are someone who has felt pressure to always have the answer, the recourse is curiosity.
Instead of pretending you know, or rushing to figure it out, get curious.
One of the best personal development and self-discovery skills my therapist taught me was to get curious anytime I had a strong reaction to something.
Maybe someone said something that I simply couldn’t let go.
Or I found myself repeatedly feeling sad with no explanation.
Here are his instructions on how to get curious:
Close your eyes and take a deep breath
As you sit still, calm your body and keep breathing deeply.
Now think about this situation, conversation, or feeling. Conjure it up. Dramatize it in your mind.
Notice how it feels. Where do you feel it in your body? Notice everything about it.
What comes up for you? Is there a memory it sparks? A phrase that comes to mind? A smell or sensation?
Spend at least a few minutes this way and then pull out a journal and start writing anything that comes to mind.
As you go through this process, you will uncover memories, feelings, or realizations about yourself long dormant. The more you do this, the more you will understand who you are, what holds you back, and where you have room to heal and grow.
Lesson learned: curiosity leads to far more powerful learning than certainty does. Stay curious.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
As I begin the second half of the year and of my life, I will continue to ask myself what’s working, what isn’t, and where next? Is this a regular practice for you in your business? What about for you as a person?
When you make it a habit, you will be amazed at the lessons you learn and the truths you uncover.
Growth Event:
Learn to assess your year so far and adjust your plans for the second (and final) half of 2022 to ensure success. Join me and my FounderUp cofounders for a pop-up workshop, where we’ll walk you through our Midyear Catch-Up process.
Plus, you’ll have the chance to book time for a small-group mentorship and coaching session to help you get the most out of 2022.
HGF Episode(s) of the week:
I’ve been traveling for two weeks, so my apologies for failing to share the most recent episodes of HGF with you. I’m catching up this week with last week’s interview and this week’s solo episode.
Last Week’s Interview:
Aljolynn Sperber and Rachael Kim are two of the most inspiring Founders I have the honor of supporting and advising. And their business My Comma is on a path to revolutionize how women and menstruators experience their periods.
This interview is full of some brilliant advice, stories, and insights:
How to date a potential cofounder to make sure you can weather the entrepreneurial storm together
Why community is a cornerstone of everything they do
What it means to lead with EQ
Future of Femtech
The experience of being a woman founder
Crowdfunding the next phase of their growth
Listen here. Online | Apple | Spotify
This week’s episode:
As I discussed in Be, Do, Have, the first step toward reaching your goals is embodying the person who can achieve those dreams. Ever since I started talking about this concept of embodying Future You, people ask me about this process more than nearly anything else.
In this episode, I walk you through the simple, but effective process of painting your vision for Future You and charting your path toward becoming them.
Listen now! Online | Apple | Spotify
Growth Resource I Love:
I took a newsletter hiatus for two weeks to go on my first vacation since 2019 and my longest since 2014. And it was glorious. My family and I took a cruise through the Inside Passage in Alaska to celebrate my Father’s 80th birthday and my parents’ 50th wedding anniversary.
I was scared to leave my work for so long, but it was the best investment in myself and my business that I’ve made in a long, long time.
Please, take some time off. Unplug. Disconnect from electronics so you can reconnect to yourself and the people you love.
Me and my partner, Andy.
A little news:
I’ll share more next week, but I have decided to take a full-time position at an incredible company. I never thought I’d be an employee again, but as I thought about my personal journey, where I was, and what I wanted, I realized there was room for a shift in my plans.
Don’t worry. I’ll still be freelancing on the side, writing this newsletter, and hosting the High Growth Founders podcast. I’m excited to share more about what I’ll be doing next week!
In the meantime, I’ll be celebrating my 40th birthday with people I love.
In love and growth,
Kasey