This is For The Firsts, a weekly letter for the “firsts” navigating career, money & life without a roadmap. This is a special place, and I’m glad you’re here.
I am still completely in awe of the Artemis II story. Four astronauts, each of them an incredible example of what it means to be first, launched into the sky for a historic mission around the moon, one that would take them further than any human had ever gone in space before.
And I know this may sound crazy, but watching this story unfold over those few days reminded me in part of my own career and life journey.
Allow me to explain.
My life has changed drastically in the last few years.
I left a stable corporate career to chase content creation. And now I’m building a company around my mission and brand. And while it’s been an incredible journey, it’s become more and more difficult to relate to others outside of that experience.
Maybe you can relate to that?
As a first, making good grades may have gotten you into more advanced classes and more prestigious universities, but now you’re no longer sitting next to the kids in your neighborhood. That job offer you spent weeks preparing for may have come with a move to NYC, San Francisco, or Chicago, but that may mean leaving behind your family. And that corporate career may come with a high salary and plenty of perks & prestige, but it probably also comes with a lot of “so, what is it you do again” when you come back home to visit.
Becasue of this, I couldn’t help but think of all the firsts those four astronauts were making, as they navigated deeper into space:
Commander Reid Wiseman. Jeremy Hansen, the first Canadian to go into deep space. Christina Koch, the first woman to ever travel beyond low Earth orbit. And Pilot Victor Glover, the first Black astronaut to ever fly to the Moon.
Incredible men and women, on an incredible mission. But as they rocketed towards the moon, I wonder if they looked out behind themseles, back towards earth, and wondered how they would ever relate this expereinces to their friends and families back home.
After completing their mission, the Artemis II crew splashed down off the coast of San Diego. They entire world watched as they climbed out of their capsule, were airlifted to shore via helicopter, and gave interviews to the press, forever cementing their personal legacy and their place in human history.
But that was almost two weeks ago.
One of the lesser talked about parts about being first, is what comes after.
How do you push a cart through a supermarket, mow the lawn, or fold laundry, when weeks earlier you were floating in zero-gravity, captivating an entire nation with your perspectives on exploration, progress, & faith?
When you’ve truly been first, at the highest level, how do you relate to or enjoy a more normal life expereince?
When we do great things, we can feel unrelatable to the very people who enabled that progress to happen in the first place. If you’ve ever felt that, or worry you might someday, here are a few things that have actually helped me stay connected to where I came from as I climbed forward.
Translate your experiences. When the Artemis crew spoke to us from space, they didn’t assume we’d know the nuance of orbital mechanics. They told stories. Victor Glover talked about his faith. Christina Koch took a few selfies. They made the unreachable feel human. Learn how to tell the the version of your story that bridges where you are and where your audience is.
Invite them along for your next mission. The higher you go, the easier it can be to stop letting people in because you may feel like the gap is growing too wide between you. But that gap only grows when you stop reaching across it. How can you involve someone else in your journey, or help them along their own?
Be someone elses copilot. Remember that it ain’t all about you, either. Taking the time to contribute and serve others can give you the grounding and perspective you may lack in your new environment. Don’t be so single-minded on your own success that you neglect to do what you can to enable someone elses.
Find your crew. There’s a reason they didn’t just send one astronaut. At the end of the day, you do need to surround yourelf with people who understand your journey. Find or create spaces where you can meet like-minded people who understand where you’re at and where you’re headed, and hopefully where you started as well. That’s what For The Firsts has been for me. And I can’t tell you how much it’s helped.
As the first person in my family to start down the corporate path, I had to learn how to build a network from scratch. And it wasn’t always pretty. I’ve written people’s names on my hand, set reminders to follow up the next morning, and stalked more LinkedIn profiles than I care to admit.
That’s why I’m partnering with Microsoft 365, because I just found a better way of doing this using Copilot in Excel. Here’s how:
Open up a fresh Excel sheet, and list a few people in your network you’d like to stay in touch with
Select the Copilot panel, and use this prompt below to have it build you a networking tracker:
"I'm going to paste a list of people I've met or want to stay in touch with. Help me turn this into a simple networking tracker with columns for: name, company, how we met, date of last contact, and a notes field. Then add a status column that I can use to mark each contact as 'active,' 'reconnect,' or 'new.'"
Collaborate with Copilot to make it truly yours. Add a section for suggested conversation starters, or have it redesign the whole thing in your favorite color
Skills may pay the bills, but relationships will make you rich. And with Copilot you can suggest additional features and deliver feedback to collaborate on fine tuning this personalized networking dashboard.
If nobody showed you how to network, here’s one way to build the system yourself using Copilot in Excel. You can learn more here.
Sponsored by Microsoft 365.
The beginning of this year has felt like, more than ever, I’m moving in the right direction. Partnerships with brands and organizations that feel organic to my mission. Speaking opportunities in rooms that truly relate to my story. And the right partners are helping me to expand my business in ways I never thought possible.
I’m still learning how to manage all this and create enough space to be the partner and parent I want to be, but I’ve never felt more confident that I am on the right path.
So here’s a snapshot of what my last few months have looked like so far this year:
Never make an excuse for who you are or what you want out of life, or feel like you have to shrink yourself to make someone else feel comfortable. You owe the people you inspire the fullest expression of your vision.
However, don’t neglect to show up for those who were there for you before any of that vision had been proven out. Your commitment to your dreams is an important as your responsibility to show where you came from how you made it happen. That’s how you make sure that, as a first, you won’t be tha last.
read previous notes here
register for my next For The Firsts event here
learn more about Microsoft Copilot here
host your own community events in NYC and Chicago at Fabrik
have me speak at your organization by filling out my speaker form
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