Start-up Lessons and Ocean Swims

I've been working on getting a heart-felt dream off the ground.  It is a web business inspired by my little brother Drew who died in 2006 at the age of 23.  It is getting close to launching now, but it has been a challenging road and sometimes trying one to stay on course with.  So you're probably wondering, what does this business have to do with ocean swimming?  

Well, this year I turned 40 and one of the ways I chose to celebrate my life was to do my first triathalon.  My decision was definitely influenced by seeing my husband Sugata complete his first triathalon last year in Malibu, CA.  It was inspiring and seemed like a good idea at the time. Little did I realize that my training for the triathalon was going to be a symbolic journey that parallelled the creation of my start-up business. 

In both cases I was doing something almost entirely new that seemed like a significant stretch.  In the case of my start-up, I had business experience but all in big companies and none of them internet based...  it still feels like very new territory despite my job history and an MBA hanging on my wall from Yale.  In the case of the triathalon,  I had done a couple half marathons, and knew how to ride a bike, but swimming and doing it in the ocean looked formidable.  That turned out to be a fair estimation in retrospect. Now I find myself a few weeks away from the actual triathalon at Malibu on Zuma beach (think big waves at the crack of dawn in mid-Sept) and not too much further away from the launch of my first website business.  

I had to take a whole set of swimming lessons to simply get myself to the point of it being safe to get in the ocean. This took the bulk of the winter and spring for various reasons of fear and probably procrastination but finally I could at least swim a 1/2 mile in the pool.  Next came the unsuspecting experience of wearing a wetsuit.  I put it on and bravely followed Sugata into the waves.  We had spent lots of time discussing how to get past the breakers and out into the ocean without getting pummeled. Surprisingly we got through quite easily, but then suddenly I found myself out in the ocean with so much compression from the wetsuit, I nearly had a panic attack.  I actually tried to pry the thing off my body without much success as tears were welling up in my eyes and my breathing was labored.  Finally I managed to flip on my back and calm down for a bit.  I went back to land, got pummeled once going in by the waves (I landed on my head) and sat on the beach pondering this experience.  

I really had to pull on my deepest resources to work my way through more waves of anxiety.  I thought about quitting, choosing to call this too risky for me, claiming it was not really something I wanted to do... etc.  (Sound familiar to anyone creating a business?) Finally I decided that I couldn't go home on that decidedly negative note and faced going out again. It went slightly better but not dramatically.  I went home wondering how in the world I was going to get ready for Malibu in a few more short weeks.  The next ocean swim got me to the point of being able to wear my wetsuit without constant panic and I had a few good moments of being able to swim without overwhelm.  The next trip, I stepped up to be able to play in the waves and swim with almost no fear and some confidence I could complete the race.

 This is where I began to see so clearly the start-up lessons being reflected to me.  Some of the questions running through my head were: How many times did fear keep me from making real progress on my business?  How many times did it feel like I was not up to the task or that I was too late to the game to make it?  Why does panic set in when you least expect it?  Why did I even want to stretch my life so much in the first place? 

Some beautiful answers to these questions came back to me from inside.  I was reminded that I promised myself that when Drew died I would start living life fully, without regret.  I remembered that the journey is all there is in the end, so who cared how fast I finished either the triathalon or got my business launched.  I was learning by leaps and bounds all across my life simply because I was willing to risk failure.  One of the great keys to success for me has been choosing over and over to believe in myself, my dreams and goals, and know that if there is a will - there is a way.  Finally, I cannot hide behind any facade that these things don't matter to me.  I live with my heart out in the open and act from that place.  If it leads me to some places of fear, my choice is to walk through them and see what's on the other side.