Discovering My Own Path to Success: Reflections on Entrepreneurship

I was cleaning out some files last yesterday morning, going through papers over the last few years, (if I’m honest, I have about 12 years of papers organized in binders and I just don’t need that much stuff hanging around me!) and I came across many of my famed lists. I am a notorious list-maker. I love lists. If there is anything in the world that could be tackled in any way, shape, or form - I will create a list out of it.

Needless to say, I have lists for just about anything in my life. Client projects, wedding, moving, adopting the cat, hosting a dinner, or just grocery shopping. I organize my day in lists, I organize my brain in lists. Even when I create a mind map, I will likely translate it into a list for later.

I digress, in the process of paper-upheaval all over my living room floor, I discovered not one, not two, not even three…but something closer to 20 different business models I have created over the years. I wrote out each model painstakingly - thinking through each exquisite detail of my business with more detail than truly necessary.

Each list looked somewhat similar, familiar even, but I knew that I had created them all independently - and at different points in time. I’d start with an idea, create a model that would turn into a business I’d love to run and, likely, when the model wasn’t really working a few months later I’d take another shot and, essentially, create the same model again.

This went on for years. This happened as recently as last year.

While my business has grown over the years and taken different shapes, it seems my mind was still stuck on a model or way of working that I believed should equate success. It was a model I had seen others I admire follow - a pathway, a structure, something I could sink my teeth into and dive headfirst into to get shit done.

Only it wasn’t working. Someone else’s method was not, as it turned out, my method. And yet I didn’t want to believe it. Rather than reflecting deeper on what would work best for me, I continued to keep my eyes on the prize and watch what everyone else was doing, hoping that if only I followed the formula closely enough I would reach my own version of their success.

If I’m honest, reading through these lists and plans and ideas made me feel sad. I realized how insecure I was, how doubtful of what I was doing. I saw that I hadn’t trusted myself to follow an unfamiliar path or to try out a new way of working that, perhaps, no one else had done before.

Even my language around what I do was stuck in time - holding me to a person and ideal that had gotten me started on my journey to helping people transform - but that did not actually reflect the incredibly deep and powerful work I was doing.

I was growing and changing and hadn’t looked up long enough to even realize it.

When I saw on the floor reading yet another model I had created, the sadness started to change flavor…just a bit. While I still felt an enormous amount of compassion for the woman that I was five years ago, the one who wanted to prove herself and explode on the small business scene with an incredible business straight out of the gate, I knew in my heart that SHE was not yet ready for what was to come. She needed a security blanket around her to reassure her that she was on the right path and that all would be well.

And when I sat and reflected at how far I’ve come in the five years since I started on that journey I could see with amazement just how much I’ve grown. It might have seemed like a journey of entrepreneurship, but it was truly a journey to myself - and no matter how many roadmaps or shortcuts I tried to take, it would have been absolutely impossible to “make it” that way. I had to take my own path. I had to face my own demons and shadows. I had to learn the hard lessons and see the big and small successes that have taken shape along my own journey. Each and every experience I’ve had since opening up shop for the world has created the woman I am today.

And today I feel confident in who I am and the transformations I facilitate. And I feel confident in how little I truly know, and how much I’ve learned at the same time. I know that I am not an expert in everything and that’s okay. I know that I will continue to grow and learn, and that’s okay. I know that I will always have a sense that I wish I knew more or could do more, and that’s okay. I am exactly where I need to be - right here, right now.

Everything is perfect.

I am right where I need to be right now.

And while I sometimes still long for a shortcut, I know that there truly is no shortcut to becoming who you are. There is no easy path to transformation or personal growth. And the deeper I go and the more I embrace all of this magic that surrounds me, the greater the impact I can have in the world.

I am so grateful that I found those lists and could reconnect to that place of yearning that I know so well - and that I could reassure the younger version of myself - the Amanda at 32 and 25 and 18 and 12 that everything is unfolding exactly as it should. If only she could see just how far we’ve come, she’d know there’s no reason to be afraid.

Sending you and all the younger versions of you so much love today (and always),

Amanda

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