I didn’t set out to write a book about the last 25 years. But here we are.
Twenty-five years ago, I sat down at a desk with an 88-page business plan, a flip phone and a pretty good idea of what I thought I was building.
I was 33.
A lot has happened since then.
Over the last few weeks, I’ve been sharing 25 thoughts from those 25 years. Stories about starting a company, the people who helped build it, things I got right, things I got wrong, how my definition of success changed, and some lessons that took me longer to learn than I’d probably like to admit.
Somewhere along the way, we realized those stories belonged together.
So we put them together.
25 Years Later: Hard-Fought Lessons on Work, Leadership & Life is my reflection on what 25 years of entrepreneurship actually looked like from where I was sitting.
It isn’t a business playbook. I don’t have 10 secrets to success. After 25 years, I’m probably more suspicious of anyone who says they do.
It’s simply the story of what I learned while building a company, leading people, raising a family, getting some things wrong, changing my mind, and changing myself along the way.
There are stories about the early days when I didn’t know what I didn’t know. About growth and the decisions that come with it. About leadership, culture, failure, family, purpose and figuring out what actually matters.
And there are a lot of people in these pages.
Because if there’s one thing 25 years has made very clear, it’s that none of this was built alone.
If you’ve been part of any piece of these 25 years, thank you. There are a lot of fingerprints on this story besides mine.
And if you’re curious, I’d love for you to read it.
Choose how you’d like to read:
Read online or download the original PDF.
Read the Kindle edition on Amazon.
However you choose to read it, I hope there’s something in these pages that makes you think about your own work, leadership and life a little differently.
Thanks for being part of the journey.
Chris