I finally said the name of the book out loud

Before anything else: This September I'm opening Lead From Within. It's an intimate experience for leaders who are ready to build the mental fitness to lead with clarity when it matters most. If you'd like to learn more or reserve one of the six spots, reply POD and I'll send you the details.

I told you about the $36 in my bank account. The borrowed suit with the tags still on. The rooftop dance. Derek shouting "you idiot, call her back!" But today I want to tell you the part I left out.

The year and a half that followed was brutal.

I walked into Microsoft with a high school diploma in a room full of people with MBAs and decades of corporate experience. I didn't know half the words they were using. I smiled, nodded, and went home to Google everything.

I was terrified someone was going to figure out I didn't belong there.

Then my manager called me in and told me the team felt I wasn't adding enough value.

He wouldn't tell me who said it. He wouldn't tell me what specifically they meant.

I was furious. I thought about quitting on the spot.

But here's what I did instead:

I went to every single team member, one by one, and asked them directly. No HR. No manager as buffer. Just me, asking the questions he wouldn't answer.

Was it uncomfortable? Absolutely.

Did I get the truth? Yes.

And once I knew what the real problem was, I could actually fix it.

You cannot solve for what you refuse to face.

Our team won President's Club.

Doors opened. Bigger roles. More responsibility. A lot more than $36 in my account.

But the external win wasn't the real shift.

The real shift was quieter than that.

I went back to school, not because someone told me to, but because I needed to close the gap in my own self-acceptance. The degree wasn't the point. Proving to myself that I belonged was the point.

That's the thing nobody tells you about impostor syndrome:

The evidence doesn't fix it. You have to do the inner work to fix it.

I talk to leaders every week who are sitting exactly where I was.

They're in the room. They're performing confidence they don't feel. They're waiting for someone to hand them permission to belong.

And when the feedback comes, from a manager, from a peer, from their own quiet doubt at 2am, they either shrink or they go silent.

Very few of them do what actually works: get specific, face it directly, fix the right problem.

The question isn't whether you belong. You're already in the room.

The question is: what are you refusing to face that's keeping you from owning it?

→ Wondering which part of you is sabotaging the room? I use a specific assessment with my clients that identifies exactly what's getting in the way, and it's not what most people expect.

Reply "ASSESS" and I'll send you the private link.

Twenty years ago I was that person in the room, terrified someone would figure out I didn't belong. I've been trying to write about it, in one form or another, ever since.

I called it a dozen different things over the years. None of them were honest enough.

Last week, I finally landed on it:

Not inspired. Not motivated. Required. Because staying exactly where you are stops being a neutral choice the moment you can see where you actually want to go.

The Microsoft story above, the room, the vague feedback, the decision to go find the truth myself? That's chapter one.

I built something for this issue instead of just asking you to reply.

Answer honestly. Nobody sees your name attached to it but me, and every response is shaping what I write next.

See you next Saturday.

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