A few weeks ago, JD, Luna and I went to the campus of Stanford University for kickoff week of LBAN; Latino Business Action Network. This is a program designed to help Latino business owners learn how to grow and scale their businesses. It was there that I met David, my mentor for the program.
David is a former intrapreneur for IBM.
I love the term intrapreneur because David has the mind, the passion, the hutzpah to be an entrepreneur out on his own, doing his own thing, running his own business. But what he decided to do was to apply his entrepreneurial skills at IBM. So when you're an intrapreneur, that means that you're an entrepreneur on the inside of another organization.
David is the kind of guy that took a failing department that was going to get cut if massive changes weren’t made and spent time asking questions on how he might turn it around.
He had 9 to 12 months to make the first massive change to prove that the concept in it and of itself would work and he did. So yeah, he knows his stuff.
What I didn’t know then was what a profound impact my weekly conversations with David would have on me and my business.
You see, David has a way of asking questions that have opened new doors to the insight I’m gaining into my own journey and my own goals.
On one of our calls, I told him that there's this dichotomy between loving what I do and loving the business I created. And then on the opposite side of this very wide spectrum is the deep desire for more.
I can't shake this feeling that there's more.
“More what?” he asked.
I responded, “just more.”
There's more desire, grit, growth. It's like deep inside of me and I'm trying to figure out how to get it out into the world. This faceless, nameless idea or energy; this percolation that I know in my gut is more. I told him it feels like I'm ready to sprint, but I'm not quite sure if it's the right direction.
I’ve found myself in this place more than once in my entrepreneurial journey. It’s a common feeling and i’m guessing you may have felt it too.
Listen >>HERE!<< for David’s advice to me and his four simple words that have catapulted me forward in becoming unstuck with what’s next and how you can use it as a framework to push forward when you find yourself feeling stuck in your own business journey.