🦄 The Journey to Create A Category of Me

We made it. 🙌 

25 issues published. 📥 ✅

Thanks for joining me on this journey to 100.

Looking forward to celebrating with a Bon Jovi GIF at 50.

Let’s get into it.

A quick story about human magic.

Going through life not having clarity on "your thing" sucks.

Some people know what they're great at but don't see its value.

Others are good at a few things and aren't ultra passionate about any one.

For me, it’s both. 🤪

If you’ve ever been in a similar boat, look to your past for clues.

Flashback, way back, to my senior year of college.

A professor handed back my final paper and said to me...

"I don't know what you plan to do [for your career], but you should find a way to incorporate your writing."

I never forgot that statement.

Yet, for 20 years, I ignored it. 🤦🏻‍♂️

Then, late last year, I walked away from a dream job.

I had the privilege of serving 5,000 business owners and 100 leaders.

Consulting and training the top 100 to leverage technology to make their businesses more profitable and efficient.

Such a role required a unicorn of seemingly mythical proportions. 🦄

I was a 97% fit.

I had purpose.

The problem was... I was burnt out.

Not for the reasons you might think—the reasons you see everywhere on your LinkedIn feed these days.

Your people want to win and become a better version of themselves.

5 ways to lose them:

1. No clear path forward for personal and professional growth

2. No bandwidth (i.e. understaffing)

3. No clarity on personal KPIs

4. No vision for the team

5. No accountability

Any single issue can drain a person. Experience all five and you’re toast.

The real issue though was this experience had killed my magic.

My unique traits that put me in the path of opportunity in the first place.

I was dead inside.

No longer able to push toward my potential.

Unable to be the version of myself I wanted to be.

For my colleagues, my family, and most importantly, me.

After a few months of unplugging, coming to peace with my newly lost identity, and learning to be without the incredible community I had been a part of for five years (15 in tech years), I remembered what my professor told me.

I started writing this weekly newsletter and invited a few people close to me to subscribe and check it out.

The intention was to create a roadmap of sorts for entrepreneurs looking to grow their businesses and grow personally.

This newsletter became a safe place for me to try something new, fail forward in public, and begin to revive my human magic. ❤️‍🩹

Thankfully, it was working. I was healing and reconnecting to my true self.

Breathing life into the parts of me I had ignored or disregarded for years.

I realized that how I had defined being “a creative person” was bullshit.

In late July, I felt it... a subtle, mental reset. That spark. ✨

That spark was the next phase of the journey to become the best version of me.

A version at the intersection of all of the things that I’m good at, the things that I love and bring me joy, and solutions the world needs. My IKIGAI.

A super-niche. A category of ME.

For the past two decades, the world has been moving faster and faster, less and less analog, and more and more digital.

We’ve traded quality for quantity, care for speed, and warmth for cold.

While our culture has finally begun to embrace individualism, the vast majority are still following trends and seemingly working harder to be someone they’re not than the best version of who they are.

The world desperately needs that unique, one-of-one combination of you.

If you’ve been exhausted, buried in your day-to-day, or unable to see a clear path ahead, ask for help, create space in your life to slow down, look for clues, revisit your strengths, and do you.

You deserve it.

Thank you for creating a safe place for me to rediscover my magic. 🧙🏻‍♂️

Have a restful and restorative holiday season, my friends.

We’ll continue ONWARD in 2024. 🥂

Your biggest fan,

GORDON

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