Washington, DC – Crestwood. 78 and finally sunny after weeks of rain.
A couple days ago I had a conversation with Brandon T. Adams. He, along with his finance Samantha Rossin is producing a show called Success in Your City. The premise is to discover what success is. It was a fascinating conversation – I recommend you follow him and this project. I’ve been giving this topic of “what is success” a lot of thought myself.
For 18 years I’ve been building. First, and I’m not embarrassed to admit it now, I was building for myself, and defined success as such. For at least 5 years. Then, I was building for my family and looked at success that way, though that was still mostly about me and that took another 5 years. Then I started to experience what it meant to build for others thanks to my partnership with Bo Menkiti whose guidance helped me see how incredibly rewarding it is to build so that others can have opportunities. Once again, the definition of success changed.
And so, I find myself at 41, due to the success of our endeavors, and the addition of the very talented Dontae Carroll as our COO to run the day to day, and the support of my loving husband Christian Salinas, in a position to examine how to expand and advance all of this. How do I define success going forward?
So, this summer of 2018, I’m on a listening tour. I’m traveling around the country teaching, speaking, and listening. I will also be consulting our top talent locally and driving strategic growth initiatives for the company, all of which I’m very excited about.
While I haven’t yet quite figured out how to expand my definition of success going forward, I can tell you I sense now is a particularly interesting time in history. The world is grappling with change occurring as our society evolves to a more digitally based service economy. We are now a global network of connected societies which presents additional opportunities and challenges driven by differences in culture, generations, and socioeconomics. The uniqueness of this time, and the exponential pace of change puts enormous stress on businesses and people making decisions to ensure success into the future. I’m very passionate about working with businesses, people, and communities to succeed in these dynamics.
And so, the journey continues…