Redefining Success for Entrepreneurs: A Journey of Purposeful Presence and Fulfillment
I remember the moment I adopted someone else's narrative on purpose. I was 18 and had just watched The Social Network. I left the movie theater shaking with excitement.
“I have the opportunity to impact billions of people before I even turn 30 years old? That’s my purpose!”
I would spend the next 12 years operating under that script of success. I would give up personal relationships, dating, and some of my sanity in order to live this crowning achievement. Eventually, I convinced myself that what I wanted was to be a public company CEO. Doesn't that sound awesome!?
In the last five years since I sold my company, I've been rewiring how I think about success. I've come to a profound realization: redefining success for entrepreneurs isn’t just about reaching a distant aspirational outcome. It’s about finding meaning and fulfillment in the present moment. I now live with purpose, not chasing it.
The Power of Curiosity and Flow
For the first six months of sabbatical that I took after selling my company, I gave myself permission to follow my curiosity. Every day, I would sit down and learn about one new thing that I was curious about. I would seek books or watch YouTube videos about a myriad of things, from nutrition to fitness to psychedelics. It was an exciting and exploratory time that I look back at with fondness. I needed the space to explore without any of the constraints of how I would monetize these explorations.
And frankly, it felt really good. I'm a huge fan of learning, and being able to follow my curiosity gave me energy. It also gave me space from my old identity, where I felt I had to be the kind of person that could execute and had all the answers. I could wipe that slate clean and re-enter the cocoon of a beginner's mindset. I had no ego on the line with any of these topics because it didn't matter to me, and nobody had any expectations of me as the subject matter expert. So I had the chance to play.
That's how I stumbled upon reading How to Change Your Mind by Michael Pollan. It was from there that I felt a deep calling in my soul to be part of the psychedelic renaissance, which led me to do a psychedelic guide work training. I now offer psychedelic work in my coaching practice. But it didn't start that way, and in fact, even as I went through the program, there wasn't any intention to make that my new “purpose.” I just knew that I could focus for hours on the topic. It was one of my first lessons in redefining success for entrepreneurs—realizing that purpose is found in flow, not in rigid expectations. A purpose statement would've actually restricted my ability to play with this energy and be creative.
Research has shown that people who engage in higher flow states have a decreased risk of depression and anxiety and that flow can act as protection against burnout symptoms in longitudinal studies. By allowing myself to follow my curiosity and enter flow states, I was not only finding more fulfillment in the present moment but also protecting my mental well-being.
Redefining Purpose and Meaning
But it wasn't all learning and butterflies. I had to contend with the game of comparing myself to others who were more classically successful, their names being splashed across headlines like The New York Times and Forbes. Here I was, exploring a very tiny segment of a market, where I probably was only going to have an impact on a few people in my lifetime. There was a sort of shame that set in and a fear that I wasn't achieving my potential.
But when I paid attention to my moment-by-moment experience, the work I was doing felt purposeful. After I started to take on my first clients as an executive coach, I noticed that I would come out of sessions with so much energy and enthusiasm that I would babble about my newfound skillset to my friends.
No, coaching doesn’t fulfill my original success script around impacting billions of people, but it does fulfill a sense of joy, meaning, and challenge in any given moment. So what did I do? I surrendered to the feeling because it felt good and it was generating income. I had to learn to surrender to the fulfillment of the moment. And that’s when I started redefining success for entrepreneurs—understanding that success is not about scale, but about alignment with what feels purposeful in the present.
The Beauty of Simple, Purposeful Acts
When I read about the Japanese concept of purpose, ikigai, I was inspired by the fact that many of the longest-living Japanese people considered one of their purposes to be cultivating friendships. They would see their friends multiple times a day and invest like it was their job.
This made me reflect on my own relationship with my community. Every morning, I walk to the café with my fiancé and my dog, and we have rich conversations and bring the light of my dog’s smile to many people’s mornings. There’s something noble about this simple daily act. It’s an act of connection that actually feels purposeful. I fall into a flow state almost immediately and forget everything else that's going on. I’m present and engaged. Presence is my signal of purpose.
I see it now as one of my purposes to take care of my community by offering taco nights, movie nights, and spending time with my friends. This isn’t something outside of my purpose; it is one of my purposes in this life. And who knows, maybe I am impacting billions of people. If it is true that we are all three degrees of separation away from one million people, then how you engage with your close circle could have a monstrous impact on the world.
Finding Alignment and Flow with Downshift
At Downshift, we have ambitious professionals in the program who are questioning their sense of purpose after leaving their jobs. They are feeling daunted by big, existential questions. "What do I do next?" becomes a question of "Who am I, and am I good enough?"
The game that they are playing is to use the old paradigm of "I am my work." They are trying to take off one costume to quickly replace it with another. But what if you are disenchanted with the old games you’ve been playing? What if you don’t want to play that game anymore? What we circle back to at Downshift is redefining success for entrepreneurs—finding the threads in your life that bring you passion, energy, and flow. Then we support you in weaving those threads into something that can get you paid. But not rushing to monetize it before you dance and play with it, before you learn what it wants to become.
Embracing Purposeful Presence
Let’s take purpose off of its pedestal—the pedestal of the one statement that stays with you forever and becomes your identity. The outcome you must achieve at all costs. I'd like to substitute the old definition with the idea of purposeful presence, a feeling of joy, flow, and fulfillment in any given moment.
If you’re trying to figure out what’s next in your career transition, I invite you to apply for our next Downshift accelerator program. Let’s explore redefining success for entrepreneurs together.