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There are moments in life when other people believe in you before you fully believe in yourself. And then there are moments when you have to do the believing yourself.
When TippingPoint offered me the opportunity to take over New York City, I knew I was getting a huge break. I had been in technology for less than a year. Most of the people around me had a decade or more of experience.
The opportunity was financially enormous. It also terrified me. I knew I could not let that fear show.
So I started talking myself into the person I needed to become. Not publicly. Not with arrogance. Inside my own head.
I reminded myself that I had already generated more than 30 meetings for TippingPoint as a reseller. I reminded myself that people were responding to me. I reminded myself that I had earned the opportunity.
I repeated the message until it became a belief. That belief created confidence. The confidence created energy. The energy created a kind of swagger when I walked into customer meetings and partner meetings.
I began to realize that confidence is not always something you find. Sometimes it is something you build. That lesson has stayed with me as I have moved through my career and into entrepreneurship.
When you are building KARSA, there are countless opportunities to question yourself. Is the product good enough? Is the market ready? Can we manufacture it? Can we build the company? Will customers want it? Will investors believe in it?
Those questions are legitimate. But if you let every question become a reason to doubt yourself, you will never get anything built. At some point, you have to say: I am capable of figuring this out.
That does not mean pretending you know everything. It means believing you can learn what you do not know.
There is a difference between arrogance and self-belief. Arrogance says, "I already know everything." Self-belief says, "I may not know everything yet, but I know I can figure it out." That distinction has mattered enormously in my life.
I have never had the perfect résumé. I have not always had the same education, experience or credentials as the people sitting across the table from me. But I learned that my actions could speak louder than any résumé.
I could prepare harder, work harder, follow up, build relationships and keep my promises. And I could keep reminding myself that I belonged in the room.
Founding KARSA requires that same mindset. You have to believe in the possibility before there is enough evidence for everyone else to believe with you.
Sometimes the first investor in your idea has to be you. Sometimes the first customer has to be you. Sometimes the first person who says, "We can do this," has to be you.
So talk yourself up. Not because you are better than everyone else. Because you need enough belief in yourself to become the person capable of doing what you have decided to do.
