Some of you may know this: I started my career as a designer and I capital L loved it. The work was creative and real and for years it gave me purpose. After a while something shifted. I wanted the impact behind the work to mean more.
So I chased that feeling by taking on projects that felt aligned, then building a company where people who loved design could do their best work. Growing the business gave me meaning in a way the design alone no longer did.
But ambition evolves. Eventually I realized the container I built in my thirties could no longer hold what I wanted next. Nothing was wrong. I had simply outgrown the version of myself who created it. My ambition needed a bigger field.
The shift came when I wrote a single sentence before I ever interviewed for a Chief of Staff role: I want to be in service to a visionary leader working toward a generational goal.
It felt bold at the time and embarrassingly earnest, but it was the truest thing I had.
I started using it as a filter. If the role didn’t align with that belief, it wasn’t for me. When I interviewed for a stadium development project, I said the line out loud. And if I’m being honest… I really wanted that job. But over time, as I sank deeper into this belief about service, I realized something I didn’t know at the beginning: the right role wouldn’t pass me by.
If someone didn’t want what I was offering, the passion! the intensity! the energy! that was the sign. Not rejection. Alignment. We weren’t meant for each other.
The truth is like poetry and most people hate poetry.
That kind of clarity was freeing. I didn’t have it in earlier chapters. Looking back, sometimes I wish I had.
Here’s the thing that’s easy to confuse about service: it’s not subservience. It doesn’t mean erasing your standards or dissolving your boundaries. It’s quite the opposite. It’s choosing to use your talent in the direction of something bigger than your own ambition.
Once that clicked, the noise got quieter. The drama, the smallness, the petty stuff… it’s funny how quickly all of that loses oxygen. When you’re anchored in something bigger, you stop flinching at things that don’t matter. You stop working to be liked or validated. You stop chasing the wrong things because you finally understand what the right things feel like.
And on the hard days, during the long weeks, the blurry months, the pressure, the pace… that single sentence is what gets me out of bed and back into the arena. I’m not here for the perks or the proximity. I’m here because the goal is big and the work is worth doing.
The work works on you more than you work on it.
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