A love letter
I launched this blog in March of 2018. My first post was about Maria Jose, a member of our leadership team who had decided to move on from the company. The day she left was hard because I loved working with her so much, and at the same time, I was incredibly excited for her to pursue opportunities that she was excited about. I wanted to share how it felt as a leader to sit with those opposing feelings, so I wrote about it and published my words.
Now, here we are—almost seven years later.
I’m not sure that I’ve ever expressed how much it means to me that you’re here, reading my words, week after week. We started at zero, and today, more than 10,000 of you receive this blog in your inboxes. That is amazing.
This week—the week of Thanksgiving here in the U.S.—I want to thank you. I’m going to try my best to put into words how much all 10,000 of you mean to me and to our team.
This blog has become the place where I share my innermost thoughts and struggles as a leader—the thoughts that circled in my head while I sat in hotel lobbies by myself the night before speeches, feeling like everything in my business was falling apart. Thoughts about how I felt like such a bad leader and questioned why all I seemed to do was screw up. Thoughts about how lonely I felt and how it seemed like I had no one to talk to who could understand what I was going through.
Instead of keeping those thoughts to myself, I decided to get out my computer and write about them. I would often start with a really vulnerable sentence, one that felt a little too honest, and then delete it because of the shame I felt when I saw the words on the page. But then, I would give myself a little pep talk and muster up a tiny amount of courage to type the same sentence again. I would write and rewrite until I put it all out there, and then I would hit “publish”—and immediately think, “Oh no! What did I just do?!”
Every time I put words on a page and made them public, it felt so vulnerable. It felt like I was revealing pages of a diary that were meant only for me.
But every time, the same thing happened: Someone would write me back. And not just one person, but several. People would thank me for my vulnerability and tell me that I had described something that they, too, were going through. They would tell me that before they read my post, they had felt so alone, but my words helped them realize that they weren’t. What they didn’t know is that I felt alone, too, and that their responses helped me realize that I wasn’t alone, either.
If you’ve ever responded to one of my posts and told me that it resonated and that you needed to hear it, that you experienced or were experiencing the same thing—thank you. You are the reason I gained the courage to keep writing, to keep sharing, and to keep being honest with you and with myself, no matter how scary and vulnerable it felt.
This blog has become a place where I feel safe. But I didn’t create that feeling of safety; each of you helped create it. I keep showing up here because you continue to subscribe, read, share, and write back. You make it possible for me to truly be myself, and you remind me that no matter what, I’m never alone.
I’ve shared some of my biggest life moments with you. The one I will never forget is the blog I wrote about Spiros, my husband, the week before our wedding. Most people wouldn’t publish that on a leadership blog, but I felt safe to. I wrote that post at a sushi bar, where I’d taken myself on my last solo date before I got married. I will never forget when Spiros read that blog post (because he is also a subscriber here—thank you, babe!). I walked out into the kitchen, where he was reading the blog on his laptop on the kitchen counter, and he had tears streaming down his cheeks. This blog has given me a space to express what’s important to me in my personal life, to write the words that are in my heart, and it has created moments like that night in the kitchen with him. Thank you.
I’ll never forget the blogs I wrote during the pandemic. I felt so lost as a leader. I hardly knew how to take care of my team while also ensuring that my business could survive a pandemic, but this blog became the place where I reflected on that and got clear on my values as a leader. This blog is where I learned to take a stand, to put action behind what it means to put people first, and to become an advocate of human leadership. Thank you.
One of the most special posts we ever published wasn’t even one that I wrote. At the time, I was so overwhelmed, overstretched, and burned out that I broke down in front of our leadership team and finally let them into how I’d been feeling. Their response was to jump into action and start taking things off my plate—including writing that week’s post. So many of you responded to it, and it made my team feel so proud. Thank you.
The biggest moment I can remember on this blog is when I announced that we would be selling my cleaning company, Student Maid, so that we could focus on leadership development work. Announcing it on this blog made it real—I knew there was no turning back. This became the place where I could share my dreams and feel supported to chase them. Thank you.
I’ve written about some really hard, but also really beautiful moments on our team over the years: really difficult goodbyes, major milestones and turning points, and hard conversations that challenged us as a team and pushed us to be better. Not only has this blog given me a place to share my story, but it’s also given us a place to share our team’s. Any time we encounter a hard moment or learn a tough lesson, our team encourages me to write about it. They feel safe to be vulnerable, too. Thank you.
You’ve held me—and our whole team—accountable to showing up here every week. To keep learning. To keep growing. To keep reflecting. To keep sharing. To keep being really honest about what it takes to be a leader and the human moments that happen along the way. You’ve supported us in our darkest moments, and you’ve celebrated us when we’ve come out wiser on the other side.
Every time you write back to a post, I want you to know that our team shares your words on our Slack. We all read them. We all take them to heart and reflect on them. We talk about them together and acknowledge how grateful we are for you. We think about how we can continue to use what we learn to help and support you and the 10,000+ human leaders who meet here every week.
And that goes double when we disagree. When you challenge my perspective on a post, I want you to know that your courage to speak up and offer your thoughts helps me learn. It helps me consider different sides. It makes me a better, more compassionate leader and human.
And even if you don’t write back, the fact that you are here, opening this email every week, choosing to remain part of our community . . . it just means so much. Your time is precious, and still, you choose to spend some of it with us.
To every single person reading this . . . thank you. I am so grateful for you. Consider this my Thanksgiving love letter—to you!
And in the spirit of Thanksgiving, I hope this post inspires you to share your thanks with someone who means a lot to you.
With so, so, so much gratitude and thanks,
