Member-only story
THE NARRATIVE ARC
Watching The Company I Founded Edit Me Out
Partnership, purpose, and the price of walking away
There’s something surreal about watching a holiday video from your own company and seeing yourself erased from the narrative. Like a digital ghost, I sat in my home office late one night, replaying the holiday message, counting the familiar faces that remained while mine was notably absent. The faces of people I’d hired, trained, and mentored smiled back at me through the screen, their holiday cheer a stark contrast to the hollow feeling in my chest.
Eight years earlier, under the Mediterranean sun at a travel conference in Greece, I met my future business partner, Valerie, who was already making waves in the cultural exchange industry, having built a successful operation in the US and earned entrepreneurial accolades. We shared a vision of opening the world to people eager to explore and understand different cultures.
Our conversations continued long after the conference ended. We exchanged ideas about creating groundbreaking programs that would transform people's experiences of new countries and cultures. Valerie’s experience and reputation in the US market complemented my ambitions for the Australian market. On paper, it was the perfect partnership. We wanted to disrupt the…
