Starting Before You are Ready

In the spring of 2024, I walked away from a secure career with no real plan, no guarantees, and every statistical reason to believe I would fail.

In spite of the risks and uncertainties, and against the advice of my work peers, I stepped into the unknown and took a leap of faith. Faith that I could figure it out. That I could make this work. And perhaps the biggest motivator was the faith that my new path would be better than the one I was currently on.

On a bright spring morning, as I headed out to work, I told my husband that we needed to talk. To share that I was desperately unhappy at work and didn’t see it getting better. That there was something different that I wanted to do.

He looked at me with a bit of surprise and an immediate response. It was not what I expected, but it was what I needed. For his reply was this:

“Just do it. I trust you.”

At that moment, I broke down into sobs. I caught my breath. I looked at him and blurted out, “Don’t you even want to know what it is?”  

And once again, he repeated, “Just do it. I trust you.”

And so, I accepted my employer's severance package. And a mere six weeks later, I had “hung up my shingle” and was the owner and founder of K. Taylor & Associates, LLC.

Every year, since that fateful decision in 2024, I take a moment to honor that decision. To celebrate that decision. To acknowledge just how much I didn’t know, how much I’ve learned along the way, and how much that one decision had changed the trajectory of my life.

Just this last week, I had the chance to be a mentor to a woman who was about the same age as me when I left my employer, a woman who also found herself unhappy at work and not seeing a way that would change, a woman who carried the responsibility of income and health benefits for her family. She had asked for my time to learn from my career journey and to find answers to many of the questions that nagged at her as she considered a new path. I’ll call her Mary.

And so I shared my story with Mary. How those fourteen years provided me with foundational skills that I could leverage as a consultant. How K. Taylor & Associates morphed into Evergreen Leadership, once I had my own worldview and perspective. How that led to authoring a book, to teaching at Purdue. How teaching at Purdue led me to hire a student who became an intern and then a business partner in a different venture. And how that led to me and five others founding another organization that helps people like me launch sustainable businesses.

At the end, Mary asked the question that prompted this musing:

“How did you get over your fear of starting?”

And that is an excellent question! My reply at the moment was not the most thoughtful or eloquent, so I’ll make another attempt here!

Momentum only comes through movement.

Even a small movement toward something big moves you forward. Creates momentum. Informs your next step.

The actions can be small and less risky yet need to be directionally correct. Research is a great first step; yet at some point, you must stop thinking and begin doing.

The key, for me, seems to be taking a bold step that forces you to act, then learning like crazy. Preparation is important, but not the goal. Start before you feel fully prepared, for you will never be fully prepared.

I’ll use writing as a personal example. Since college, I’ve had a desire to write, yet I never took action beyond what was required at work. Until a few years into my consulting business, when blogging was hot, and I believed it would be a great way to stay in touch with clients, create something of value, and scratch my writing itch. And so, I started. My website got a blog page. I created my first mailing list. I hired an editor whose job was not only to edit but also to hound me to get content to her by deadline.

And I wrote. Not well. Not wonderfully. But my words were out in the world. Blogs then turned into a series of ten pamphlets. Those ten pamphlets, plus another four chapters, turned into my first book.

And perhaps the boldest action is just to take those first steps – shaky, uncertain, with anticipation and trepidation colliding.

There is a false safety in research mode. It allows you to feel you are engaged without being exposed. From The Book on Strategic Obsession by David Webb

Beginners are supposed to be imperfect.

Here’s the hard truth. Your first steps will be shaky. Your first efforts awful. You will be clumsy and, at times, embarrassed at the outcome. And that is just the nature of beginning.

Elizabeth Gilbert, in her book Big Magic, normalizes this ageless process by sharing that we need to write shitty first drafts. Ones that will be discarded, tossed, or reshaped over time into something that is closer to what we imagined. Yet one does not get a finished work, be it a poem, play, piece of art, career, or rewarding relationship, without first beginning with something far from perfect.

Once you begin to understand that shitty first drafts are an integral part of the process, you are freed to just begin. You just start – with the wisdom that a start is just a start.

Knowing that, that first step is like the first time you climbed up the ladder to the high dive. Scary. Daunting. But exhilarating as you fling yourself into the air with the water waiting below to embrace you. The next time is easier, the next even more so.

Experience teaches what preparation cannot.

You can do lots of research. Interview multitudes of people.  Ponder and plan. Question yourself endlessly. Scroll social media endlessly. And repeat. Yet sooner, rather than later, you must begin. You will never be smart enough, well-prepared enough, or well-equipped enough to begin brilliantly. At some point, thinking and not doing is a cowardly way to give yourself the excuse not to commit to action.

And in an age where we have unlimited access to a world of knowledge at our fingertips, it is a seductive way to feel productive, to feel you are making progress, to stay in your safe little bubble – thinking and not doing.

For you don’t learn to swim on dry land. You don’t land a better job without applying for it. You don’t improve a relationship when the only dialogue you have is in your head and not spoken aloud.

Once you do, you learn. Some lessons will be hard. Some will be easy. Some will be surprising. Yet every active step forward yields new insights – and when captured, those insights make your next attempt better and the next even better still.

Action attracts support.

Starting is scary. Often you feel quite alone as you venture into this unknown territory. Yet there is one thing that very few people tell you. That once you start, help arrives.

This is one of the messages in The Hero’s Journey. In the first stage, you overcome your resistance and make a mental decision to “just start”. Notice that in this journey, even before you “cross the threshold” of initiation, a mentor appears. At times, out of nowhere. A guide. A helper.

I can attest this is true. When I flung myself into building a consulting business with nary an idea of how to do it, Marion Cook called within a few weeks. She had work I could do. I sub-contracted with her as my first real engagement. But even more importantly, she took me under her wing. Not only could I watch and observe how she did business, but she also coached me. She dragged me around Chicago on sales calls. She corrected me when I needed it. Her mentoring was worth thousands of times more than my paycheck (but that was good, too).

Examples abound. I’ve always wanted to learn to do stained glass. I read the book. I bought stained glass. And then I decided to take a class. It was canceled. And so, I ordered a kit. It looked easy enough. It was rated for “beginners”.

Turns out even the simplest projects are daunting for a novice. I did fine until the work required soldering with a tool that heats up to over 400 degrees. And there came Barb, who spent several hours at my side, teaching technique, encouraging me on, offering tips, and reassuring me that my first shaky attempts were not all that bad. Actualy, they were – because they were shitty first drafts, but I appreciated her grace.

Mary, whom I mentioned earlier in this musing, discovered the same. Our conversation led me to introduce her to two trusted peers who willingly offered their time to meet with her and share their journeys and guidance. Just begin- and mentors appear!

And so, if you can suspend disbelief for just a bit and trust that once you start, mentors and guides and helpful people will appear, it becomes less daunting to start.

Decide and the universe will follow. Ralph Waldo Emerson

Mistakes are survivable and often forgettable.

I learned the concept of a “failure bow” from Beth Outland, during a workshop with fellow entrepreneurs. With roots in improv, a failure bow is a lighthearted way to acknowledge a misstep, publicly acknowledge it, and move on. In fact, one can actually celebrate a misstep with a failure bow. Not that you intentionally wanted to fail – but recognizing that you were merely human and in spite of your best intentions, things did not go as planned. Fail – Bow – Laugh – Learn – More on!

For all the steps that you take forward, there are bound to be missteps. Mistakes. Unintended consequences. And if you’re executing perfectly, you’ve aimed way too low. So, just like the shitty first draft, failure is a part of the process. A part of the process that is more informative than all the success. The part of the process that tests your mettle and fortitude. The part of the process that separates the doers from the dreamers.

It’s reassuring to know that failure is part of the process, but even more so to know that for the most part, our failures loom larger in our own minds than others. I can still recall the time I forgot my place in a key presentation six years ago. Weeks later, I was still beating myself up about my performance. Calling myself names I’d never call another. Bemoaning the impact my snafu had on my career (talk about awfulizing something out of proportion).

A week later, in a hallway conversation with a peer who had been at the meeting, I once again apologized for my poor performance. The person looked at me quizzically. They asked what I was talking about. Turns out, they didn’t even recall the incident that I had been obsessed with for the past week. Clearly, others at the meeting moved on, with nary a disparaging thought to me, hours after the botched performance. My angst and self-reproach had robbed me of time, energy and peace of mind, while others had long ago moved on.

It was a lesson I learned from my daughter’s many years of dance lessons and performances. When you make a mistake, dance on. Some will know, most will not. And the key is to pick yourself up and carry on.

Many years later, I still believe the most transformative words anyone ever spoke to me were these:

“Just do it. I trust you.”

Perhaps that is what we all need eventually — someone who reminds us to begin before we feel ready.

Because there is one failure that truly is fatal:

The failure to begin.

‍