From Autopilot To Full Thrust

By Michelle Poler

Last week, as I was recording my video for this Wednesday about entrepreneurship (watch below), my husband and partner, Adam, realized he was being the autopilot person I was describing on my video. He immediately realized how much he didn’t want to be that person and decided to face one of his biggest fears.

The next day, he went to his office just like any other day, except this time he was determined to quit.

As you can anticipate, Adam had thousands of questions in his mind, questions with no answer. Will we make it? Will we be ok? Will we be able to pay for our rent, food, health insurance? All rational questions we ask ourselves before diving into the entrepreneurial path. Questions only G-d knows the answers to. Adam, unlike me, is a rational human being. I’m a dreamer, a free spirit, a hopeless romantic and a fairy-tale-ending-believer. My questions look more like: Why would this go wrong? What’s next after we succeed?

The night before he took the big step we stayed up till 3 a.m. thinking this through. I’m a motivational speaker, so I’m supposed to inspire him to face his fears, right? There’s one problem, him facing his fear is a fear of mine as well. As optimistic as I am, him quitting his job would be saying goodbye to our reliable source of income. Am I willing to move outside of Manhattan to make this work? Am I willing to stop eating out, shopping or paying my ClassPass membership?

We identified two needs we are trying to fulfill: stability and independence. Can we have them both? Sure, but not yet. Taking into account that stability is a fear-based need, we opted for independence.

Ladies and gentlemen, Adam is now officially my full-time partner at Hello Fears. Hello unpredictability, excitement and lots of hustling.
May the force be with us!

xo,

Michelle