The CEO of Life

The other day, I was feeling a bit challenged. Sometimes as an entrepreneur, you have big wins, and you have what feel like big losses all in the same day. That is why they often refer to entrepreneurship as a roller coaster ride.

Yesterday was one of those days. I was about to hop on a call with prominent neuroscientist, Paul Zak, for a Regarding Consciousness interview when I saw an email come through from Web Summit.

My breath caught in my chest for a moment. I was waiting to hear if I was going to get to pitch in less than two weeks at Web Summit. 

Glancing at the email with only 1 minute to spare before my interview, I saw the words “You have been selected for Startup Showcase.”

OH MY GOSH. It is happening…we get to pitch. I share this good news with Paul and we have an amazing and fun interview.

When I finally had a moment to spare, I went back to my emails and saw another one had come in just after the first stating “We want to thank you for applying for PITCH at Web Summit. Your application(s) were carefully considered but unfortunately, you were not successful on this occasion.”

My heart fell. I was crushed. Here I thought we had just been selected to pitch at Web Summit, though it turned out the Startup Showcase was something else (albeit a good opportunity, not the same as pitching).

I wanted to give up. So many arduous hours and phone calls. When I saw this new email it was at 4 pm my time and I had back-to-back calls almost straight through until 10 pm my time.

How was I going to get through this day?

Do you want to know how I got through it? My tools. One of my favorite things I share with the CEOs and other founders I mentor is that despite lacking superhuman abilities, Batman thrives with his super tools. 

I started by calling one of my mentors, David Ghiyam , whom I can almost never reach, and unfortunately had no success. I then shared with my husband what happened and he held space for me while I allowed myself to feel the gamut of emotions that were running through my body.

I then went to one of my other favorite calming tools, I indulged in a power bath for about 5 minutes while I listened to Lisa Abramson 5 5-minute meditation while in the bath called “Five Minutes of Self Compassion.” 

Next, I began writing a list of 100 things I was grateful for, another of my go-to tools, dusted myself off, got back up, and hopped on the next 5 hours of calls.

In the midst of one of my other calls, my mentor David, called me back. I was shocked! We can go months of playing phone tag or missing one another with him being in LA and me being in Lisbon.

It is a miracle! I step away from the call I am on to take David’s call and lament my concerns about whether or not I am meant to be an entrepreneur and question whether I have what it takes.

In usual David form, he cut straight to the point with the three minutes we both have “Jen, it is the person with the strongest consciousness who wins the game. You need to have certainty beyond logic. You will win. You will create a storm of energy and even if you don’t win with this product you will win with the next.”

He continued “When you are going to the next level of your soul, you will feel like it is not working. You will feel like you are running on an empty tank. You lose all your inspiration right before you get to your next level.”

These words were exactly the succor I needed at that moment. They propelled me through my next few meetings. 

On my second to last call of the night, I connected with a brilliant young entrepreneur, Tord Olav Dønnum , who has software we were excited to use for fundraising. I shared a bit about my journey, and at the end he said…”Wow, you are the CEO of Life!”

That really resonated with me. As much as I may be the CEO of a software company or someone who coaches and works with CEOs, I am also the CEO of life, as each one of us is.