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Were gonna need more bacon.

Well hello there.

I got so many kind notes after my last whenever-the-spirit-moves-me quasi newsletter I sent a few weeks ago. Mostly people have asked what my life is like post ChairmanMe.

Sometimes in the throws of startup life, and a pandemic, and a sudden contraction of startup capital, you can just day dream about how nice it would be to be on the other side of it. I thought of closing CM like a hallway spewing acid I had to walk through but on the other side would be a magic, secret garden.

Once youve pulled the trigger and gone through the grief and emerged from the fallout. . . is it as rosy as expected? Is the magical garden grass greener?

It occurred to me today I havent had to stress about meeting payroll for about six months. Thats the longest time I havent had to since (checks notes) Eli was born.

She is 12.

I remain so so so grateful for the Pando and ChairmanMe journeys. Both transformed me and gave me incredible life experiences and growth I would have never gotten otherwise and I remain proud of the work both teams did.

And yet.

Yes.

Yes, I have to tell you life is beautiful on the other side.This grass is so green, its like a magical secret garden within the Emerald City.

I know when to quit with jobs.

When I was in my 20s I had this moment. It was 2:30 am and I was in the backroom of a bar in Downtown Memphis counting out hundreds of dollars in tips from a night waiting tables. Dr. Zarr and the Funk Monsters were the band that night, and those were always big nights. I was taking a semester off college, working an internship at the Memphis Business Journal for my future, and working two other jobs to pay my bills now: Waiting tables at the High Point and nannying for the child of a world famous opera singer.

My then boyfriend/ later fiance/ never husband worked at the bar with me and was sitting across the table, both of us beyond exhausted. I looked up and said with total and clear finality, I am done.

Ready to go? he said. Do you want to go to Alexs for a burger on the way home? Alexs functionally did not close, and it was where the entire Memphis bar scene wound up after shift.

No. . . I mean, yes, I do want a burger. But I mean: I am done with this. I said.

Done with the owners and their friends trying to grab me after too many drinks, done trying to serve an entire bar of patrons in the thirty minutes before a Memphis State Game started across the street, done trying to hear orders over Dr. Zarr (aka a white dude in an afro playing disco hits to drunk young Memphians on Saturdays.)

Done eating at 3 am.

Done being on my feet that long.

Done having to stuff tips in my shoes before I headed out, because odds were I might get mugged in the parking lot, and I didnt want them to take all my money.

Should have been done when Shirleys gun went off by accident in her purse, narrowly missing a bartender and leaving a reminder bullet sized hole in the register thats probably still there.

The bartender was in shock and tears and screaming.

Kirk leaned out from the kitchen laughing, Oh, Shelley, its just another day in the hood!

[How was that not the moment!?]

I loved that job. I was really grateful I was able to make so much money every night, and I was good at waiting tables. I enjoyed the mental challenge, and I made a ton of friends. I met the person I thought I was gonna marry.

But when you are done; you are done. I left that night and never waited tables another day in my life.

I felt the same clarity after Pando when I quit journalism a career I loved even more that gave me even more money, fame, success, pride, that I was even better at, and where I met so many life changing friends and a man that I love and live with but wont marry but only because Im allergic to marriage.

When I knew Id quit journalism, I remembered every one of those sense memories of sitting in that moldy smelling booth with hundreds of dollars in tips in front of me deciding I would never again wait tables.

And, yunno, I feel it now with the Silicon Valley style entrepreneurship thing, at least with me in the drivers seat. I dont think Ill ever do it again.

In each of those cases I was so all in, I so left it all on the field, I dont have a sense of unfinished business. I was proud of me. I dont need to prove anything to anyone. In some ways, Id changed and grown and gotten what I needed from each of those eras; in other ways the game changed and Im not right for it now.

Life is good now. I do co-own a company thats gone from zero to millions in revenues in 18 months, doubling in revenue year-over-year, but its a bookstore, not a startup. Flimsy distinction maybe, but in practice its not. Aside from some small friends and family investments, we dont have outside investors, dont have a board, and Im not the CEO and we dont have to worry about payroll because we are very profitable. It doesnt keep me up at night.

When Im not doing that, Ive been consulting for three Silicon Valley clients, with a few one off projects thrown in. I dont even know how to tell you what Im doing: A mix of growth marketing, content strategies, event producing, brand strategy, with story and community growth at the core of all of it.

I truly love each of my clients, find the work fascinating, consuming and challenging, and yet, its just 20 hours a week, Im paid well and Im appreciated and listened to.

I have room for one more client, and Ive got two potential ones to choose between.

Im doing my last ever CM-style bootcamp in April, because someone asked nicely, and while I am really looking forward to it. . .Ive also realized its also the last one. I thought I might do something like this quarterly, but the bookstore and consulting is beyond enough.

Im in my taking-things-away not adding-them era. I know it is with the same clarity I knew before.

Yes I have stress, because you always have stress. Yes I get angry or sad. Yes theres still money stress from time to time because I think no matter how much you have theres always money stress. But its the most ease Ive had professionally . . . well, ever.

Its so similar to what I found after I stopped waiting tables and became a journalist full time (comparatively much easier!)

And what I found after I quit being a journalist to be a CEO of a very different kind of startup (also comparatively MUCH EASIER!)

In each case Ive thought Why didnt I do this earlier?

But I couldnt have in each case. It was the disciple and hustle and brazen go-getter confidence and learning to thrive in the total chaos of those Dr. Zarr nights that made being on deadline doable.

And it was EVERYTHING I did for nearly 30 years as a journalist that gave me the right to try ChairmanMe.

And I was the combo of that plus six years of raising millions in capital as a woman and the challenge of SELLING every day against womens own internalized misogyny that made me an absolutely formidable genius marketer who can get paid a large amount an hour for that genius.

Its that each ended at the right time that makes me still love it. I say that often about my marriage: It wasnt a failure. It was an incredible partnership for 15 years that ended at the exact right time. And because it ended at the right time, I can be grateful for those 15 years.

I spend a lot of time thinking about the future me.

How much shell appreciate when I dont drink during the week, because Ill have so much energy and clarity in the mornings. How much shell appreciate coming home to a clean house after a work trip to San Francisco. How much shell glow at 7 am when the kids lunches have already made the night before.

No one is more invested in your present than your future you. And the present you is like the seed investor of the future you. I once did a hypnotherapy session where the future me appeared to talk to the past me in the form a giant hawk.

Im that hawk now. Im finally her. Shes full of wisdom, soaring around the desert, loving life, going to her 30th high school reunion in a few weeks and extremely grateful for it all.

I dont know what drives so many people Ive known for the past few decades to feel they have to come back to do just one more startup. Especially because the people I know who do it most, have already had so much more enormous success than I ever did.

Why do you want to do that to yourself? I always wonder.

You did so much. . . How are you not done?

Whatever that thing is, I dont have it. Maybe thats healthy; maybe it means Im not as dedicated as others. Im fine with either. Im done. And when Im done Im done.