Start with You

You just ordered a salad. The waiter asks, "Italian, blue cheese, or ranch?" You pick one.

Is this how you have been making the most important decisions of your life?

The menu is the world's answer to a question you stopped asking. Picking from it feels like deciding. It is the moment you stop.

Trained in decision analysis at Stanford, Ben Lamorte still spent fifteen years ordering from someone else's menu before finding his work.

When demand dried up, his sixteen-year-old daughter asked what he would do if no one paid him. He had no answer. He had treated himself like a product.

Everyone tells you to prototype. Run experiments. Try things. Nobody tells you when to stop. An experiment is supposed to end. This book tells you when you are done. Then you go beyond prototyping and assert yourself into the world.

When you start with your strengths and your values, you find a direction that is not on the menu.

Becoming yourself does not guarantee success. It guarantees something different: whatever comes belongs to you.

Start with you.