Who do you need to become to reach your goal?

Every ambitious founder hits this point.

You know where you want to go.

The vision is big. The market is real. The product has legs.

But progress stalls. Or it slows. Or it feels harder than it should.

And the uncomfortable truth?

It might not be about the market, or the strategy, or the team.

It might be about you.

At least that’s what I was confronted with over the past few years. 

Everything felt hard. We weren’t making progress in line with our effort. 

And I started to lose confidence in my own ability as a business operator.

You start to question if you’ve actually got what it takes to survive the game. 

Everywhere you look, others seem to be doing better than you. 

And because you’re hyper sensitive to it, everything validates your thoughts, and it ends up becoming one big self-fulfilling mess. 

Breaking that cycle can be difficult.

But one thing helped shift my focus. 

As always, it’s a simple question.

(plus a bunch of coffee and a clear schedule)

Initially I applied it to my business, but the same lens can be applied to you too. 

I started by writing down a bunch of answers to this question:

Who are you today?

I mean, how do you show up in your business, your brand, your market?

What are some words that describe you or your business?

What would others or the market say about you?

Who's ahead of you, who's similar and who's behind you?

I got pretty honest with myself at this point. I was like a pendulum swinging between cutting, brutal honesty and kindness.

By the end of a coffee, I had a bunch of words that summed up who we were as a business.

And I had a diagram of where we sat relative to other businesses.

But the next question is even more important—who do you need to become to reach your next goal?

The founders who win don’t just level up their products.

They level up themselves—as leaders, storytellers, operators, and culture-setters.

That means asking hard questions:

Are you still clinging to an old identity that’s too small for your new goals? I was still using words to describe myself that held me back.

Does the market perceive you the way you need to be seen to win? For me, the answer was yes but it was I holding myself back.

Are you spending time where your future self would—or where your past self still lingers? In many cases, I was retreating to comfortable work, not work that would propel us (or me).

You don’t need to become someone else.

But you do need to become more of the person your business needs next.

It’s not always about working harder. 

Sometimes it’s about letting go, showing up differently, or choosing better problems to solve.

This is the work businesses or brands need to do. And this is the work business leaders need to do also.

So—who are you today?

And what else do you need to become tomorrow?

I’d love to hear what this stirs up for you.

Take care and have a great week.