As someone who felt like their voice had often been muffled at work, I always wanted to create a space where our employees could feel like they could contribute in their own unique way.

I thought that letting people choose their own adventure would lead to a healthy, happy workplace culture. Birds would sing, rainbows would fly out of everyone's ass, and we’d all walk around high fiving each other with perpetual grins stuck to our faces.

That’s what the best organizations do right? Freedom leads to creativity and people's highest contribution, I thought. This is how healthy cultures are born.

So I loosened my grip, took a step back, and waited for the magic to happen.

Our culture started to evolve. But instead of creating one healthy culture, this hands-off approach created multiple cultural factions with different goals and different rules. Even though we all shared the same value structure, each culture interpreted those values differently.

Everyone was doing their thing which is what I thought I wanted, but instead of feeling pride for letting people follow their dreams, I felt ashamed and embarrassed of the organization I’d helped create. It was nothing like the vision I saw in my head.

I remember saying to my business partners. “I’m pretty sure I would never get hired here, actually, I’m pretty sure I would never even apply to work here.”

We had no North Star. No common sense of direction or purpose. Working together took a back seat to individual ambitions. Our desire to let people build their own little slice of heaven inside our organization had created a fucking mess.

We had to rebuild our culture, this time by design. What we discovered was quite amazing.

A strong sense of culture doesn’t constrict people's creativity, it channels it. It gives people who resonate with your vision a place to fit in and use their gifts to contribute to their highest potential. A place to learn and grow, to discover more about the world around them and themselves at the same time.

It empowers people to make decisions, experiment, hold each other accountable to a higher cause, and makes it clear when it’s time for them to seek their happiness elsewhere.

Almost paradoxically, with stronger leadership and a shared cultural vision, people have taken ownership on a level we’ve never seen. Quite frankly I’m blown away by our leadership team and what they’ve been able to accomplish. It wasn’t instantaneous–we had to build trust, and it took some time to let go of the past but we made it through the rough waters.

You don't need to run a business to appreciate navigating with intentionality. Taking your hands off the wheel and coasting through your work, a project, your relationships, or the long game of life is a recipe for ending up somewhere that doesn't feel quite right.

So go steer the ship. If you don’t, someone else will. In fact, many other people will, and you might get lost at sea.

While recounting workplace horror stories with my business partner, I mentioned that one of the keys to my sanity at work over the years has been actively avoiding responsibility. I was reasonably good at saying “no.”

In reality, I wasn’t avoiding responsibility as much as I was being selective about where I was channeling my energy.

This required some restraint and often meant accepting a lower status (and lower pay) at work to be closer to the things I cared about.

Of course, you don’t help anyone or make any personal progress by avoiding responsibility. At some point, you have to lean in and take a swing. At some point, you have to say yes.

It's not a science. I haven’t found a golden yes to no ratio, nor have I ever found a job that perfectly aligns with all my gifts and desires with no strings attached (I think that might be a hobby).

I did, however, approach my work with intentionality. I wanted to make a career out of coffee and to do that I knew I needed to act like a professional. Professionals are intentional with their career paths. They’re not perfect but on average they know when to say no, and perhaps more importantly, they aren’t afraid to say yes.

I went on a Why discovery binge a couple years ago. I felt completely lost and hoped if I could find my why, I’d find myself, and hopefully my happiness along the way.

Of course, I already knew my why. I already knew what made my heart sing and how I could use that to help others, it just didn’t fit into the day to day reality I’d created.

I also already knew what was bumming me out. I didn’t particularly like my job. I didn’t particularly enjoy working with most of the people I was working with. Kind of an odd place to be when you own the company.

I hated pretty much everything that we did. I hated the time I wasted in meetings. I hated the over the top bubblegum service in our cafes. I hated our merch designs. I hated our product photography, our social media posts, our website copy, our leadership team dynamic. I hated my relationships with my business partners. I hated how people offered up ideas I’d brought up years ago and acted like they’d fucking discovered Atlantis. I hated it.

But I’d never admit it. I lied about loving my job all the time. Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do?

So I showed up and clocked in. Then I’d go home and work on my why discovery. I was shocked that happiness wasn’t flying off the page. There was no electricity like I’d been promised. No “Aha!” moment. No clouds parting and no epic ray of light to illuminate my path to glory. These why discoveries were about as big of a letdown as owning a business was.

But I’d never admit it.

“Maybe this isn’t the place for me,” I thought. Maybe I could get a regular job. Maybe I could be a writer–I like writing!

I told one of my closest friends I wanted to write instead of owning a coffee company. He looked at me like I was out of my mind and asked me what I’d written that anyone had paid for. I hate honest friends.

I couldn’t figure out what the fuck I was supposed to be doing. Everything that was supposed to feel good didn’t.

So in a last-ditch effort, I started having honest conversations. I said things to my partners like:

“I feel really shitty when you do this,” and “There’s no way this can happen.”

They said similar things to me. It was stressful and refreshing at the same time.

I asked people who worked for us that seemed to be even more unhappy than me questions like: “What makes you want to work here?” and “Is there a better path for you to use your passions and skills?”

There was a mix of tears, anger, blame, then (sometimes) acceptance.

I handled the whole thing pretty poorly but it bore fruit.

I stopped doing my why discoveries and started doing projects instead. Writing, drawing, filming and editing. I channeled my inner self. What would young me do? What has consistently brought me joy over the years? Brought me closer to other people? Brought me closer to myself?

I didn’t journal about it, I didn’t make graphs, I simply did it.

Through the work, I slowly rediscovered my why. Of course, I’d known my why the whole time. All I had to do was have the courage to be honest with myself and share that honesty with others.

So here I am on a new journey. Rebuilding my love for this thing I helped create. Taking ownership of the part I played in letting it feel so underwhelming. Letting go of what doesn’t serve me. Using my rediscovered gifts. Building new relationships and rebuilding old ones.

Is it perfect? No. But I accept and embrace my power to help mold and shape it instead of just being mad about it.

I never wanted to own a business because I knew that if the vision in my head didn’t line up with what existed in reality, I couldn’t deal with that. I couldn’t own that. I didn’t want that weight on my shoulders. I didn’t want that glaring imperfection to be so closely attached to my name.

But a business is like a person. It’s got quirks. It can never be more perfect than the people that are helping to shape and build it, and imperfect people build imperfect things. The same rule that applies to all the amazing people in your life also applies to your business, project, or idea:

You don’t fall in love with something because it’s perfect, it’s perfect because you fall in love with it, and to fall in love with it you have to show up.

I love sharing what I’ve learned.

I haven’t always been good at it–my methods early on were often more destructive than constructive. My passion and ego regularly got in the way of helping others learn.

I see this time and time again in well-meaning educators. They are so wrapped up in what the subject matter means to them, they fail to realize their job:

To be an assistant to discovery for others.
To engage curiosity.
To create emotional connection.
To empower.
To inspire.
To develop.

This requires restraint. A powerful yet humble approach. A mindset of service.

How do we identify true educators?

It’s not a certain skill threshold, number of accolades, or fame.

It’s simple:

True educators put the student at the front of the class.

From a marketing perspective, the wrapper is important. The wrapper sends a signal about what’s inside. If you roast great coffee it makes sense to design a bag that's equally engaging. A bag that people will want to leave on the counter instead of putting in the cupboard.

The bag design doesn’t affect the quality of the coffee but it affects our perception of the quality of the coffee. This is fairly straightforward when we’re dealing with inanimate objects.

When we’re talking about people it’s much more tricky. While we’d like to pretend the wrapper is indicative of quality or potential, all we’re really doing is being judgmental. Removing the chance for discovery.

As a business owner, I’ve yet to find a correlation between how people look or dress and their performance or engagement at work.

There are people all around us who are hungry—ready to step up and do amazing things if given the opportunity.

If you're having trouble finding great people to walk with you on your journey, it’s possible you need to spend less time focusing on the wrapper and more time engaging with what’s inside.

No one faults the actor for putting on a show.

Most people don’t find Leonardo DiCaprio’s portrayal of Rick Dalton in Once Upon a Time… In Hollywood to be inauthentic. They find it entertaining and memorable.

That’s the beauty of a great film or play — they transport us to another world and create intense emotions that we remember long after the experience is over. That the world we’re engulfed in doesn’t exist and is simply a carefully crafted cocktail of people pretending to be other people doesn’t detract from the experience at all, in fact, it adds to it.

If you’re in the service industry you’re also in the entertainment industry. Every day you have the opportunity to create a memorable experience for someone. Creating that experience often means checking your emotional baggage at the door.

Feeling down? Overly stressed? Angry?

That’s fine. It happens to all of us.

It’s ok to name and claim our emotions but once we decide to clock in, step behind the counter, and enter into the realm of guest service we’re making a choice.

A choice to not let our negative energy bleed into the show and detract from the experience we’re trying to create.

Is it a challenge to do our best work when we’re not feeling our best? Sure. The flip side is, if we only do our best work when we feel our best, we won’t get much done.

So we put on a show. For the benefit of those around us. To build the muscle of doing hard, important work even when we don’t feel like it. To generate energy and create an emotional connection that will have a positive impact long after the experience is over.

There's no switch to be flipped. No big changes to be made. Only consistency.

One foot in front of the other. We're all going somewhere - sometimes with intentionality, sometimes blown by the whims of other people or a misplaced sense of obligation.

The forced reflection isn't bad. But reflection doesn't serve us well if it only comes once every 365 days. The other 364 deserve attention as well.

If we reserve this deep reflection for once in a blue moon it shouldn't be surprising to look back after many years to find we've been cultivating a life that feels a bit off.

Every day matters. Happy New Year.

When we started our organization we felt passionate about giving our employees more. More took the form of profit-sharing, trips to coffee growing regions, employee ownership, and the like.

We built a culture of: “This is your journey, Cat & Cloud can be whatever you want it to be!”

A choose your own adventure book of work.

As someone who values freedom and individuality, this idea felt really amazing. Give people the gift of freedom plus a few signals of our trust and belief in them, and they’ll do their best work, be rewarded along the way, and feel like they’re a part of something special.

It didn’t work. Too many captains with their own compasses sailing in different directions creating factions on factions. Factions I at times allowed myself to participate in. A workplace at times resembling a shattered window.

It would be easy to blame the people around us who took our gift of more and ran amuck with it, the people who misinterpreted our words and used them in ways we never intended but that would be passing the buck. I know the person responsible is the one I see in the mirror.

Our failure to be able to confidently say: “This is who we are, this is what we believe, this is where we’re going.” Our failure to own our expertise and honor the work we’d put in for decades. To trust our gut. To realize that honoring our vision is the best way to help others.

That bump in the road has led me down a path of rediscovering things I’ve always believed.

Culture

That there are a ton of amazing, talented, and capable people in this world. But for someone to shine as bright as they possibly can they need to be in the right place with the right people.

I believe we’re all more similar than we are different - we have this huge shared human experience that gives us the ability to respect each other and treat each other with care, and at the same time on the subculture scale which our jobs fit into, we don’t all fit in everywhere and that’s ok.

These subcultures of close friends, family, and work provide environments that channel powerful expressions for what I believe are people's superpowers. When we’re lucky enough to find these subcultures that truly spark the fire in our soul we’re capable of almost anything.

This is my hope. That more of us can feel empowered to seek out and find those places that align with our passions, talents, and beliefs. We’ll all have to make some stops along the way that are out of alignment for us — a first job, a summer, job, a job that we hate but keep anyway because hey, we gotta eat — and in those cases it behooves us to do our best work as much for our own practice and reputation as the ability to be of service for others.

More 2.0

I still feel strongly about workplaces giving their employees more. In looking back on the life cycle of Cat & Cloud and also my own experience as an employee it’s easy to see that not all gifts are created equally. Gifts like profit-sharing and employee ownership can’t create a strong culture. That would be too easy. Too transactional.

Gifts like freedom without limits won’t guide people to do their best work for the organization and others around them but only for themselves.

So what can you give? If you’re an employee what do you expect? You’ll have to figure that out for yourself. In our case we’ve found that a strong sense of direction, leadership, and giving people something to work for is better than simply giving them something.

At some point, most of us will have a job we don’t love. A job we see as a pit stop between points A and B. Our first job. The summer job. A job that’s purely functional.

Here's the story of mine.

A Detour

When I was 21 I had back surgery. At the time my whole world revolved around skateboarding. I worked at the skateshop, I skated all day, I made skate videos, skateboarding was everything.

After about 6 months of recovery I could move but not well enough to skate. I was tired of playing video games and felt like it was time to get back to work.

I didn’t want to go back to the skateshop. Well, I did want to go back to the skateshop but the thought of being around a culture I felt so strongly about while not being able to participate in felt painful.

One day I was chatting with a friend of mine who worked at the coffee shop down the street from my house, talking about my job hunt and he said:

“Dude, why don’t you just work here? You kick it here all the time — I’ll put in a good word and we’ll make it happen.”

Now I always loved and drank coffee. My friend Josh and I used to keep a thermal carafe of coffee in our high school locker that we could sip off throughout the day. I mean, it was Folgers but this was the late 90’s.

Despite loving coffee, I’d never thought about working at a coffee shop or being a barista but I remember thinking: “Fuck it, I can do this for a few months until I’m super healthy again and then move on.”

Then something very strange happened. In between making paninis, chicken wraps, and 16oz white mochas, I began to fall in love.

Espresso seemed so magical, so mysterious and intriguing. I had to figure it out. I didn’t exactly know why but I just had to.

When Scott the espresso machine repair dude came through I always hung out after hours and peppered him with questions.

I started disassembling the grinders and putting them back together.

I would buy gallons of milk and come in after-hours to practice milk steaming and latte art.

I bought my own tampers and brought them into work.

This escalated into buying my own grinders on eBay.

In a pre-Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube world, I would scour obscure corners of the internet looking for any coffee knowledge I could find.

Everyone I worked with thought I was nuts and they were right.

Showing Up

Part of this was my personality. I have a hard time having a casual relationship with anything. I’ve always had the attitude that if you’re going to clock in for 8 hours, you might as well make it count.

I’ve always felt the need to do my best work even when I didn’t care about the job. That my work was representative of who I am and because I respected myself, simply doing an average job wasn't an option.

Almost 20 years later my entire professional life revolves around something that was supposed to be a pit stop. A summer job. A detour that turned into its own path.

This speaks volumes about what can happen when we show up. When we respect the work and respect ourselves.

We constantly have the opportunity to open the door to the possibility of discovery, surprise, new beginnings, and growth, but only if we’re engaged.

So if you’re phoning it in right now, do yourself a favor and give it your all. Worst case scenario you build your work ethic and reputation, best case scenario you might just fall in love.

I posted on Instagram yesterday. You know. One of those posts you don’t really want to make but you feel like you have to, if only to let everyone know: “I’m still here!”

So I trudged through it. My weekly contribution to the ever-growing mountain of digital garbage.

During the process of trying to find the perfect words to express my emotions, I was repeatedly interrupted by people who love and care about me.

A text from a good friend. Ignore.
A call from my mom. Declined.
Even my dog wanted my attention.

I don’t know what was going on yesterday but people seemed hell-bent on connecting with me. They must not have known I was already busy staying connected.

I finished my post and put my phone away.

Two hours later I picked my phone back up and went straight to my post to like the comments and write small blurbs of thanks to people I don’t really know.

I never called my mom back but hey, at least the rest of the world knows I’m still here.

When I first started falling in love with the world of coffee I fell head over heels. The excitement and magnetism I felt towards this new journey was strong — I spent nearly every waking moment engaging with this new love in some way shape or form.

In many ways it was amazing. I got to spend my days doing work I was deeply engaged in and the side-effects of my hard work and dedication were wild.

“Do you want to come to Colombia and teach coffee producers about coffee culture in the states?”

“Do you want to visit Milan to make espresso at the biggest coffee machine show on earth?”

“You planning on going to World Coffee Expo in Vienna?”
“No.”
“Well your plans just changed, I’m paying for your trip.”

It blows my mind to think of how fortunate I was, but there was a cost.

When I started itching for the next level of my journey I pulled my head out of the sand to realize that I didn’t really know who I was or what was fueling me at my core anymore.

I went so deep in one dimension that most aspects of my life were unrecognizable to my former self.

My health, my close relationships and marriage, my connection with things that had always been safe places (skateboarding, music, drawing), every aspect of my life outside of coffee suffered.

I’m still reeling from the aftershocks of this one-dimensional mindset nearly 10 years later.

Every day is a step forward in the process of rediscovering myself and reclaiming my happiness.

Sacrifice

While my effort and attention were rewarded with some amazing, irreplaceable experiences, and a strong foundation of skill and knowledge in a certain niche, looking back I realize I would have had the potential to go much farther and had more fun along the way if I would have split my energy 80/20 or even 70/30 instead of 100/0.

Some level of sacrifice is necessary to make big changes in our lives. The question is how much do we sacrifice, what do we sacrifice, and for how long? We will trade our time. We will trade some amount of energy. But do we need to trade our sense of self?

I’ve always had the problem of fully abandoning the past when looking to move towards a new future. Every time I start a new project I feel as if I have to reinvent myself. Start from scratch. I hate it. It’s exhausting. I don’t want to do that anymore.

So now I’m playing catch up.

Something may have knocked you off your path. Taken you away from yourself. We’ve all experienced it. It’s easy to blame the obvious causes: work, school, some sort of societal pressure, a task we had to do to survive, something we hate.

But it could just as easily be something we love that’s pulling us away from ourselves.

The ’90s are hitting hard right now. As someone who grew up skating in the ’90s and having all of my deep-seated cultural references tied to that era, I’m getting blasted with a barrage of nostalgia that’s just begging me to open up my wallet.

The formula is simple. The kids grew up and now they have money. Money they’ll gladly spend in hopes of recapturing the feeling of days gone by.

It’s a game and it’s fun to play as long as your expectations are in the right place.

Nostalgia is spending way too much money on that pair of skate shoes you had back in the day because you hope it will bring back that feeling you had on those warm summer nights, staying out till all hours with your friends and the adventure, possibility, and mystery that goes along with having a car, no cell phone, and no responsibility.

It’s a great fucking feeling. But the shoes don’t have anything to do with how you felt, and buying them now won’t recreate those feelings. They’re simply a souvenir of a time gone by.

So maybe instead of trying to purchase the feeling of the past, we can let go of the story that our best days are behind us. We can own that we have the power to generate equally powerful feelings by creating new experiences.

Experiences created by understanding that what was truly special about those nights wasn't the clothes or the music or even our youth but the strong connection we felt with ourselves and the people around us, the freedom that came with having no expectations and being fully present, and the naivety of believing anything is possible. Because it just might be.

I’m really good at poking holes in plans, exposing weaknesses, and playing devil's advocate. Guess what? So is everybody else. Turns out these things aren’t particularly challenging or useful.

They’re the lowest level of pseudo contribution. They make us feel smart. They make us feel like we’re contributing. But unless there’s something ridiculously wrong, a glaringly dangerous miscalculation - this approach is less than useful.

I already know most of what’s wrong with my idea. I already know it’s not perfect. I don’t need anyone to tell me every single way my idea has fallen short, I need someone to pick it up and run with it despite its imperfection.

If we’re brainstorming I need someone to give me thoughtful input on how to make the plan better. Here lives the crux of this idea: Poking holes in a plan isn’t the same thing as creating a better plan.

If you’re in the habit of constantly poking holes in the plan without offering up a meaningful, actionable, culturally relevant alternative, just know that your boss notices. Your teammates notice. Your organization notices. (Copy and paste to all the people in your personal life: your partners, friends, and family.)

While you genuinely might be trying to help, you’re likely creating a situation where you’re seen as a cultural outsider. Inadvertently lowering the value of your potential contribution.

“Should we bring in Chris?”
“No, Chris’ contribution is never constructive, he just talks shit about everything.”

Over time my negative attitude had taken me out of the conversation of how to make things better.

I deeply wanted to be a part of the conversation so I made a pivot in my default response from: “This is why this won’t work” to “I can make that happen for you.”

Have you ever reached out to someone whose work you admire and gotten no response?

I’ve done this quite a bit and although I eagerly await their response at first, I’m always pleasantly relieved when I don’t hear back.

Why?

Because if they're communicating directly with me there’s a good chance that they’re communicating directly with a number of other people as well.

If they’re communicating directly with enough people there’s a good chance they have less time to do the work for which I admire them.

Almost paradoxically, if the energy put into connecting directly overtakes the energy put into doing their work, my desire to connect and interact with that person will disappear.

While we all matter as humans, the reality is that people feel connected to us because of the work we do. No one is cool enough to be able to just sit around all day and inspire people. No one gets flooded with praise for simply responding to messages. It’s the work that person has done that gives those messages value.

Our favorite authors aren’t our favorite authors because they respond to our DM’s, they’re our favorite authors because they write stories that matter to us.

While we might make one or two real friendships from the crazy world of comments and messages (I certainly have), the reality is that most of this interaction is a hamster wheel to nowhere. We’re trading our time, energy, and attention for a quick buzz at the expense of something much more important.

When people do work that matters deeply to us, it builds connection that goes beyond the dopamine hit we get from a simple message. The same is true for our work. When we do work that matters to other people, we have the potential to create true connection.

This is freedom. This is power. Power to put that phone down and stop chasing connection by spending all your time responding to dings, pings, and zaps, and start spending your time creating more thoughtful work.

We have our close friends and family to scratch our person to person connection itch. In most other cases we all benefit from realizing that creativity is connection.

P.S. Here’s the note I wrote that turned into this blog. It made me laugh and may very well be better than the actual blog so I’m sharing it with you. Maybe you’ll find it useful.

Creativity Is Connection: The inverse relationship between DM’s, inspiration, and connection.

• Person makes work.

• People are inspired by work.

• People reach out to person to show appreciation.

• Person feels obligated to respond (it feels nice to be appreciated).

• People like it when person responds.

• Person now spends more time responding than creating new work.

• People stop reaching out because there’s nothing to appreciate.

• Person realizes that creativity is connection.

• Person makes work.

Since I started working as a barista in the early 2000’s I’ve been party to an ongoing conversation about the idea of the career barista — respecting the craft as a true profession and rewarding it as such. What struck me as odd was that with a few exceptions, the people who were the loudest about wanting to be respected as professionals weren’t very, well, professional.

What does it mean to be a professional? If I were forced to sum it up in one word I’d have to say it means respect. Respecting yourself. Respecting the work you do. Respecting the people you’re serving.

This is probably the idea I’ve leaned into the most on my journey through life and business. I’m certainly not the best at any one thing but I try my hardest to show up, respect the process, and deliver.

So what do professionals do? Here’s my non-exhaustive list. If you can check off all these boxes not only will you be an asset wherever you are but you’ll begin to build a reputation that has limitless potential.

• Professionals show up even when they don’t feel like it because people are counting on them.

• Professionals do their best work even when they’re not having their best day.

• Professionals make mistakes but they don’t make excuses.

• Professionals seek to serve others rather than seeking fame for themselves.

• Professionals understand that your reputation follows you wherever you go.

• Professionals know that imperfect actions are better than perfect ideas.

• Professionals act with integrity on and off the clock.

• Professionals don’t gossip.

• Professionals take responsibility for their growth.

• Professionals build their organizations up, not tear them down.

• Professionals over-deliver every time.

• Professionals take ownership of their actions.

• Professionals crush the job they have even when it’s not the job they want.

More than anything, professionals understand that if you want to be treated as a professional, you must act like one first.

As an educator I used to love creating tools. I was the king of checklists, spreadsheets, binders, and keynotes. I was proud of what I’d created. All this material was a symbol, something I could point to and say: “See, I’m an educator. I know things. Here’s the proof!” 

The only problem with these tools is that they didn’t work. Sure, they contained lots of information but they mostly collected dust, and they certainly didn’t inspire. The only person who was better off for everything I’d created was my ego. 

It was often frustrating that the level of my students didn’t match my expectations, but what I couldn’t see in the moment was that they were simply matching my efforts: passive engagement breeding passive engagement. 

So what was I not doing? That’s a long list, but here are four core concepts that will get you 80% of the way there, followed by questions asked from the students perspective. 

• Creating Emotional Connection. How does what I’m learning have anything to do with values that are important to me?

• Engaging Curiosity. Does the way this is presented make me want to learn more on my own — to go above and beyond what is required not because I have to, but because I want to?

• Empowering. Do I feel overloaded with information or have I learned one or two things I can put into action today? Does this make me more equipped to do my work?

• Conversation. Are the ideas I’m learning reinforced in our culture and revisited in our day to day conversations, or are they simply ideas that live only in the bubble of these lessons?

These things are messy. They’re hard to quantify in the moment. They’re difficult to track on a spreadsheet. You can’t manage them from your office and you can’t manage them alone. They also don’t exist in a vacuum — cultural fit is a huge qualifier here.

What’s worse is if you focus on the above you won’t have this huge stack of checklists, spreadsheets, and binders stuffed with information that no one will ever read as proof of your prowess as an educator.

Hopefully seeing your education inspire action is a good consolation prize.

The organizations that move our soul have a clear vision. A vision that elevates the mundane and repetitive into something exciting and life giving.

As a leader you’re entrusted with the care of that vision. It’s your responsibility to turn something ethereal and so full of emotion it’s hard to describe into reality.

You can only move an idea forward so much on your own. Employees are force multipliers that help bring that vision to life.

Looking at this in two dimensions it seems transactional. Simply paying someone to execute your ideas.

It seems transaction from the opposite side as well. An employee trades their time and energy simply to get a paycheck.

This is until we add the third dimension.

Belief

Belief is one of the key factors in cultural fit. Belief in a vision and trusting the person who holds that vision transforms work from a job into a cause. If your employees don’t believe in your vision, if your employees don’t believe in you — there’s a problem.

As a leader you have a problem because you’ll be constantly fighting against negative friction. Trying to get someone to participate in a vision they really don’t believe in, following the lead of a person they don’t believe in, is a losing battle. It’s frustrating, demotivating, and leaves you with that nagging feeling of “What the fuck?!”

As an employee you have a problem for the same reason. It’s painful to spend forty fours a week doing something you don’t care about, for someone you don’t trust, and participating in a culture that doesn’t feed your soul.

So each side spins its wheels trying to get what they want.

Clarity

Clarity is the power for an employee to say “this isn’t for me” or for an employer to say “this isn’t for you.”

That clarity is a statement about what’s best for each party, not a judgment against the character of the other.

“This isn’t for you” isn’t the same thing as “I don’t like you” or “You’re not a good person.”

The hard part is holding the line. Owning your values and principles as an organization and as a person.

I’ve been on both sides. I’ve tried exhaustively to bend organizations to my will only to become angry and frustrated. Looking back it’s clear that the only person I could blame for my unhappiness was myself. In the moment it felt highly charged, like a battle between good and evil, but in reality it was simply the case of square peg, round hole. I should have left a long time ago.

As a leader I’ve also tried exhaustively to convince people to believe in not only the vision I see in my head but in myself. I wanted to make my employees happy, to give them the space to contribute in a way that I never could, to give them freedom to create their own path. But I would inevitably get to a crossroads where I was faced with a choice: saying goodbye to the vision, or the person. After sometimes months of frustrating conversations the answer is always so clear even if it’s not easy. That person should have left a long time ago.

Responsibility

So each party has a responsibility. Not to the other but to themselves. To take the path that leads to their own happiness and highest contribution.

When we’re all on the same path that’s when our skills can really shine.

As an employee this alignment creates a situation where you can have freedom and autonomy to do your best work for something you believe in, to contribute in your own way to something that’s bigger than yourself.

As a leader this gives you the opportunity to spend your time teaching, connecting, and helping people grow instead of constantly wrangling misplaced intentions.

Things are more fun, more rewarding, and we get more shit done when we’re on the same path. The work isn’t always easy — things worth doing rarely are, but if you’re reading this you probably already know that easy is overrated.

We’re all spending energy. The journey is sweeter when we spend that energy in accordance with what we believe. Coaching is a part of leading, but time spent trying to convince a non-believer is better spent doubling down on people who already believe (they’ll attract more true believers in the long run). Time spent trying to make an organization something it's not is better spent finding an organization that fits your needs.

So get in, or get out. If a situation isn’t serving you there’s no glory in staying in, and there’s no shame in getting out.

It’s worth the initial sting of saying “this isn’t a good fit” to recapture the energy that comes with spending your days working towards a vision you believe in with people you believe in.

If you’re reading this I bet you’re someone who has an idea they’d like to bring into the world. A business, a project, a piece of art, a book, or even a conversation.

The idea phase is powerful. It’s also really easy to get stuck there. It’s safe and cozy, free from scrutiny and the challenging but rewarding work of turning a dream into reality.

We held our organization in idea purgatory for many years. Late night talks, planning sessions, rants and raves. All fun, good memories. But I’m betting if we never actually took action on our ideas, those memories wouldn’t carry the weight that they do.

I often get asked about starting a business. My brain immediately wants to go into all the tiny details of the journey, but getting to the core of what happened when we actually put rubber to the road and made shit happen, I came up with this two step plan:

Have a vision and act on it.

Committing to action, however imperfect, is the difference between an idea and a reality.

Here’s what our action snowball looked like — the action snowball that brought Cat & Cloud out of our heads and into existence. I hope it inspires you to take the first small step towards whatever has been gathering dust on your idea shelf.

• Podcast. We had no money or resources but we had years of industry knowledge that we knew could help people. I bought a cheap recorder and we recorded our first podcast in Jared’s car while driving aimlessly around Santa Barbara. Through the help of a friend we found our way into a basement studio and then onto the iTunes new and noteworthy page. Although it started as a way to share knowledge and provided a platform for us to flex some creative muscle, it unintentionally became a huge sales tool for our organization.

• Web Store. Our friends at Dune let us take-over their roasting space after hours. We bought one 150 lb bag of green (unroasted) coffee at a time, roasted it, and sold it on our web store. Every day was an event. We brought in our own printer, bags, and mailers. We hand wrote all the labels, delivered the packages by hand to the post office for shipping, then cleaned up to make it look like we were never there. Bonus points for the three of us living in different cities. Every roast day was an 8 hour round trip drive for Charles and a 4 hour round trip drive for me. It sucked. It was amazing.

• Pop Up. I was working part-time and a local bakeshop to make ends meet and they were closed on Mondays for prep. We pitched the idea of us taking over the bakeshop on Monday with our coffee and a limited pastry menu. They agreed. Much like the roasting situation, every day was a huge setup and break down event with the magic of actually being able to serve people sandwiched in-between. A lot of people fell in love with us through that pop-up.

Each time we committed to taking the next step the action snowball got bigger and bigger. Taking action felt empowering. We didn’t really know what we were doing, but we knew we were doing it.

Everything that doesn’t exist is perfect. So you have a choice to make. What’s more important to you: A perfect idea that lives only inside your head, or a series of imperfect actions that have the potential to help you grow and bring joy to others around you?

I have to admit that for the past year I’ve been using a cheat sheet to help structure my days.

It starts with writing down the things I value most - the things that bring me energy and make me feel the most like myself. For me, these are:

• Family & Friends

• Exercise & Health

• Creative Expression

As I write out my goals for the day or to-do list, I bucket them under the value they fit into. Here’s what I’ve discovered.

• Some things on my list don’t fit into any of these buckets. That’s ok. Sometimes shit just needs to get done. No cheating and trying to squeeze a task into a category it doesn’t belong to — this only works if you’re honest.

• Balance is the key. If my list is skewed too far in one direction, even doing fun things drains my energy. I love exercising but if I’ve worked out for seven days in a row and haven’t carved out any time to have coffee with a friend, I feel out of balance. The same is true for the reverse.

• Planning to be out of balance feels better than randomly being out of balance. I’m in the final stages of finishing up a project I’ve been working on, so lately my Creative Expression slider has been cranked way up and my other sliders are a bit lower. Making meaningful gains without sacrifice doesn't exist. You can’t keep things the same and change them at the same time. Knowing this is going to happen, embracing it, and knowing you will eventually rebalance makes it feel less stressful.

• Crossover is magic. Activating multiple areas at the same time is like supercharging my day. Skating with old friends at a new spot is the ultimate for me. I’m with people I love, doing the thing I love the most, and figuring out how to attack the new terrain. Unbeatable.

• If nothing on my to-do list fits into a category I ask myself: “What on this list can wait, or not be done at all?” That thing gets replaced with something from one of my main categories. (This)

When I started playing with this system it was tough to swallow that I couldn’t just intuitively live my values. Why do I need a cheat sheet to stay on track? It made me feel weak and a bit embarrassed.

We all have pressure on us from multiple angles. There’s nothing weak about having a tool or a system that helps us consistently rise above those pressures.

The days when I’m in my feeling my best, full of energy, and most like myself always seem to be the days people say something to me like:

“You’re acting weird today what’s up with you?”

or

“You’re so intense, what’s wrong with you today?”

It used to bum me out because it made me feel people didn’t care for, or couldn’t handle the real me.

Diving deeper into my feelings, the true source of my frustration was mine to own.

The people around me didn’t know the real me not because they didn’t want to but because I rarely showed it to them.

When glimpses of the real me did come through it’s not that people didn’t like it, it just didn’t match up with the narrative they’d formed of me in their heads. A narrative that I helped build.

External pressures that shape our behavior can start young. It can be something as innocent as a parent wanting the best for their kids and pushing them too far in one direction, something as common as social pressure from peers, or something as evil as calculated manipulation by people who want to exploit our vulnerabilities.

Some people seem to be able to maintain a strong sense of self and power through anything. My desire to fit in and be a part of the group coupled with a nagging layer of self-doubt makes me a bit more susceptible to losing myself and simply becoming a combination of other people's expectations.

As painful as it is for me to admit these tendencies, there’s power in knowing and owning your patterns.

Here’s my truth:

I spent a lot of time hiding behind other people’s expectations of who they think I should be and what they think I should do.

That’s on me.

It might make some of those people uncomfortable when I step into the lane I should’ve been in this whole time and start bringing it.

That’s on them.

We all play a part. Don’t let anyone try to stop you from playing yours.