Ambition

I like big ideas, difficult problems and imagining things at a scale that can initially sound a bit crazy. However, what has changed as I’ve matured in my entrepreneurship journey is my understanding of what ambition requires.

Big ambition is exciting. Execution is mostly not.

It is budgets, contracts, follow-ups, hiring, distribution, spreadsheets, difficult conversations, fixing things that should already work and doing something for the fiftieth time when you were much more enthusiastic about it the first.

I used to think the interesting part was the big idea. Now I think there is something equally interesting about building the machinery capable of carrying it.

That has also changed how I define success. I’m less impressed by things that look big and increasingly interested in things that work. Does the audience come back? Does the business make money? Can the team deliver it again? Is the opportunity getting stronger? Can it survive beyond the excitement of the launch?

Ambition without infrastructure eventually becomes exhausting.

And as my life has become fuller, particularly as a founder and mother of three, I’ve become more conscious that ambition also has a cost. Time, attention and energy are finite. Saying yes to one version of success inevitably means saying no to something else.

All of that to say, I still believe in thinking ridiculously big. I’m just much more interested in building the systems, discipline and life that can actually sustain it.

Dream as big as you like. Then get very practical about what that dream requires.