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There's so much glamour attached to starting a business. The founder story. The origin myth. The overnight success that was ten years in the making.
But nobody posts the middle.
The new order that made you do a little dance by yourself. The customer who said you built exactly what they'd been looking for. The quiet week where nothing broke. Those moments don't feel big enough for a post but they're what actually keeps you going. They stack up and when someone's business is struggling publicly, or scaling faster than they can keep up with, all we see is the drama. The rocket ship up. The very public stumble. Never the middle. Never the full picture.
The middle is making a decision with half the information you wish you had. Replaying a mistake on a loop at 2am. Taking a long walk or doing a face mask just to feel like a human being for twenty minutes. It’s staring at a huge dream and forcing yourself to focus on the tiny step directly in front.
It’s the admin. SOOOO much admin.
I used to describe building a company like being in a dark room, feeling around for a doorknob just to get to the next room, which is only a little bit more lit. And then doing that again. And again.
The thing about a dark room is that no one expects you not to stumble. That's not the point. The point is what you do with it. How quickly you absorb what the room is telling you. How you use that to adjust your next step. How you find the door.
In the early days it felt most acute. Not like I'd never get out, more like being somewhere deeply foreign. The instincts I'd built over years in corporate, the things that had always worked for me, weren't really useful here. There’s rarely full information. Never enough time. No team to consult or distribute the weight across. As a solo founder especially, it's all on you. You just have to pick a direction and move. And you will get it wrong. That's part of it.
A few years in it isn't easy but it's clearer. Some challenges feel familiar enough that you move through them quickly. Others are the ones you barely cleared before, or got through partly by luck, and there's something uniquely frustrating about meeting them again.
Even those feel different now. A little less new. Because a lot of what's in front of you builds on the stumbles and the wins that got you here. And there's a self assuredness that comes with that. I've done some really hard things already. So the unfamiliar isn't as scary.
Social media can’t capture any of that. There’s no room for the boring slow accumulation of becoming the person that sure that they’ll figure it out.
I've never worked harder in my life. And it's one of the best decisions I've ever made.
What part of the middle are you in right now? I want to hear from you
Talk soon,
Kelly
Forward this to a founder who needs to know they're not the only one feeling around in the dark.
P.S.
The Guava Founder Circle is a small group of builders working toward their next big goal together. In-person sessions, small group masterminds, and accountability. If this resonates and you want in, reply to this email and let's talk.
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