I started with a coach because I had this venture studio idea, but I felt paralyzed. Part of me was afraid of committing and taking a risk. I also recognized that I'd had deeply embedded patterns of being an employee, of comfortable, low-risk careers. I knew there was hard work I had to do that I'd never done before, and I needed help.

The coaching had a lot more inner and emotional work than I expected, but it provided a good balance. Most importantly, it helped provide clarity that I was missing about where I wanted to go and what mattered to me. I discovered a disconnect: the stuff I read and consumed frequently had no overlap with the work I’d been doing with enterprise software. For the first time I started to give myself permission to consider a more creative, entrepreneurial career.

The program taught me to chase the sparkle—the stuff that excites me—even if it's not obvious today how it makes economic sense. It taught me to trust myself and the process, that it's not going to be a linear process to just execute. I need to allow myself to fumble and be human. What's critical is that I'm taking action, not just in my head, and that I'm being authentic.

Through this, I developed a North Star that captures my mission and allows me to evaluate different jobs and career ideas. One of the biggest insights for me was the role that I play as a connector. Whenever somebody has said this about me, I've dismissed it as shallow praise. But now, I finally see it as something I do well, effortlessly, and not everyone can do this and this has been an unlock for how I think about my work going forward.