SerpApi.Org
Stop chasing bigger. Start building better.
At the opening night of the Essence Festival of Culture, Michelle Obama joined Keke Palmer for a live taping of her IMO podcast. The conversation centered on her new book and the messages her wardrobe has sent throughout her career. But one exchange about power, timing, and earning influence landed as a masterclass for founders.
Late in the conversation, Palmer asked Obama when it is time to stop reshaping a space and start building your own.
“It changes at different points of leverage in your life,” Obama said. “We don’t always have leverage to control the spaces that we’re in, and that’s okay, because sometimes you’re developing leverage.”
Obama’s answer stopped me. Her point was that you do not always control the room you are in. So, you pay your dues. You keep from getting pushed out of a position before you have grown in it, and you build your standing until you have the leverage to set your own terms.
Founders, read that again.
Shoot for the stars. Go after the better opportunity but know when to be in that lane.
Do not overcommit before you are ready. Build toward it. Grow toward it. Stay humble as you grow into the position you actually want.
Earn the right before you reach for it.
Obama was direct about the trap of reaching too early. Young people can come in with confidence, she shared, “but you also have to earn the right to have an opinion.”
You have been told to seize everything. Say yes to the bigger stage and the bigger opportunity before anyone else gets there. However, the reach you are not ready for is the one that exposes you. You get the shot before you can carry it, and everyone watches what happens next.
I see a version of this constantly. Founders want to put their hands on everything instead of working from a strategic plan. They try to do too many things at once, and the effort scatters before any of it lands.
It looks like ambition. Up close, there is no strategic plan.
Build toward it. Don’t grab for it.
Obama did not force her way in early. She talked about sitting in rooms that were not built for her without letting them push her out.
“There were times when I felt like a space wasn’t quite right for me, but I didn’t have the leverage to change it, and that was okay,” she said.
The founder version is the same. When a client comes to me trying to do too many things at once, we back into the goal. What is it, really? Then we ask where to start right now to reach the next step.
From there we set real timelines and keep pushing toward them. The point is never to do less. It is to do the right things in the right order.
Don’t rush the opportunity.
Obama’s last advice was about how you leave a place.
“You never want the circumstances to push you out of a situation that you need to be in,” she said. “If I’m leaving you, I’m gonna leave you wanting me to stay,” she said. “I’m gonna leave when I’m ready to leave.” Only then did the bigger move open up.
Here is what I notice when someone gets the chance to run before the proof is there. They burn out. Inevitably, they spin their wheels trying to look bigger than they are, and everyone can tell.
That is the real cost of moving too soon. You are not building the thing. You are performing it, and performance runs out.
So build it instead. Get clear on where you are going. Get honest about where you are now. Then close that gap on purpose, one step at a time, until the bigger opportunity is not a stretch. It is a fit.
The founders who last are not the ones who move first. They are the ones who move when they are ready.
You don’t want to fake it till you make it. You want to already have it.
This post originally appeared at inc.com.
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