My email signature has three company names in it.
I wrote it myself, obviously. I chose the font. I chose what to include. And sometimes I read it back and think, who is this person and why does he sound so sure of himself?
Here's what running companies at 21 actually looks like from the inside.
You make a decision. You have maybe 60% of the information you need to make it well. You make it anyway because waiting for the other 40% means nothing moves. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't. You write it off as a learning experience, which is the professional way of saying it hurt and you're pretending it didn't.
Then you wake up the next morning and do it again.
Nobody tells you that's the whole job. The entire thing is just making calls with incomplete information and living with the outcomes long enough to make the next one.
I used to think confidence was a prerequisite for this.
Like you had to feel ready before you started. Like there was some threshold of knowledge or experience you'd cross and then the uncertainty would drain away and you'd finally feel like you knew what you were doing.
That threshold doesn't exist. I've looked for it.
The people I've met who seem most confident, the ones who walk into rooms like they belong there, who speak about their work without hedging every sentence, most of them are just as lost. They've just made peace with it faster.
Or they're better at hiding it, which is also a skill, honestly.
The hardest part isn't the work.
The work is fine. Building things, writing copy, talking to clients, managing projects, that stuff has a rhythm. You get better at it. There's feedback. You can see yourself improve.
The hard part is the space between the work. The 11pm moments when nothing is on fire but your brain decides to audit everything anyway.
Is this actually going anywhere? Are the right people on this? Should I have taken that other thing more seriously? Am I building what I think I'm building or just staying busy?
Those questions don't have clean answers. You just sit with them until the morning comes and there's something to do again.
I've noticed something about the founder content online.
It's either tragedy porn, I failed, I lost everything, here's what I learned, subscribe, or it's victory laps dressed up as advice. The messy middle, the part where you're just kind of going, where there's no narrative arc yet, where you don't know if this becomes a success story or a cautionary tale, that part barely exists online.
Because it doesn't perform well. Ambiguity doesn't get saved. "I'm figuring it out" gets fewer likes than "I figured it out."
So everyone fast-forwards past the part they're actually in.
This is me not fast-forwarding.
I'm not writing this to be relatable. I'm writing it because I spent a long time thinking something was wrong with me for not feeling certain. For still Googling things I felt like I should already know. For asking questions in rooms where I was supposed to be the one with answers.
Nothing is wrong with me. This is just what it is.
You build things without knowing if they'll work. You lead people without always knowing where you're going. You make the decision with the information you have and you keep moving.
The not-knowing doesn't go away.
You just get more comfortable taking it with you.
Three companies. Still figuring it out.
Ask me again in ten years. I'll probably say the same thing.
