Leslie Venetz was flipping through the journal she kept during the early days of her founder journey. It was full of notes and questions and thoughts from before she began to gain traction. Before her business had a name or a website. Before the clients. Before any revenue. Before she wrote her book. Before any of it.
What did she see?
…The opinions of several people telling her that she was thinking about her new business the wrong way. That if she wasn’t in it to build and scale a large, lucrative business fast, she wasn’t building a “real” business.
…The thoughts that went through her mind as she was deciding whether to walk away from a $460,000 compensation package toward the uncertainty of entrepreneurship and, ultimately, paying herself just $50k in her first year on her own.
…and a reminder of the fear she was wrestling with from the beginning: “What if I leave corporate and find out I've been lazy all along?”
If you don’t already know Leslie, allow me to introduce you. She had been an incredibly successful sales leader for years when she decided to go out on her own and build The Sales-Led GTM Agency. Over the last four years, she has grown it into a multi-six-figure business on her own terms. She’s a successful trainer, speaker, author, and strategist. So her fear about leaving corporate only to find out she’s lazy?! That was just fear trying to trash-talk her out of pursuing her vision
…and I bet fear has been trash-talking you, too.
As Leslie shares in our episode, her founder journey has been wild, sometimes scary, and full of both exciting learnings and crappy head trash.
Leslie is such a great example - both in this episode and in her own content - of pushing through the fear to pursue success on your own terms. And she speaks openly about how she has had to learn what advice to take and what to reject, what she needed to grow within herself and what she needed to protect at all costs, and how to enjoy the adventure along the way.
As she shared, “So many of the things that served me deeply in corporate are things that do not serve me at all as a founder. To the extent that I’m realizing a lot of them were coping mechanisms, not healthy habits.”
Dang.
As a founder, you get to shape your role, your business, your goals, your metrics, your financial model, your org chart. It may not always feel like you have that control, but you do. So if you find yourself in a place where you’re feeling friction, it’s a sign to take a step back and ask what you’re doing because it’s helping you pursue your ultimate vision vs. what you’re doing simply because you feel like you should or because it served you in the past.
As she said on the podcast, “Just because I’m good at something doesn’t mean I have to do it.”
Discernment is your friend as a founder. But in order for it to work, you’ve got to know where you’re trying to go. In Leslie’s case, she knew what she wanted, which made it easier to (eventually) shake off the bad “advice” that if she wasn’t building to scale, she shouldn’t even build at all.
Where are you going? And what “advice” do you need to ignore so you can actually get there?
Simple, not easy.
Stay BRAVE, my friends.
Lindsay
P.S. If you’re overwhelmed with all the voices around you and within you distracting you from your founder vision, you’re not alone. Not at all. Unfortunately it comes with the territory as a founder. It’s why discernment is so important. I’ve got a framework to help you with that. And I help founders like you build businesses in alignment with their vision and values and pursue success on their terms. Interested? Let’s conversate:
Reading that question, even now - years later, still takes my breath away. Thank you for the beautiful conversation.
One of the things I’ve always admired about Leslie is how intentional she’s been about defining success on her own terms.
A lot of people look at a successful founder and only see the results. They don’t see the courage required to walk away from certainty, ignore a lot of loud advice, and build something aligned with who you are.
The line that jumped out at me was: “What if I leave corporate and find out I’ve been lazy all along?”
It’s funny because I’ve found many of the highest performers carry some version of that fear. Not because they’re lazy, but because they’ve spent years measuring themselves against someone else’s scoreboard.
I’ve had a front-row seat watching Leslie build this business over the last few years, and what stands out most isn’t the growth. It’s the consistency with which she’s chosen alignment over expectation.
A timely reminder for every founder trying to decide which advice to follow and which advice to leave behind.