“Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can."

- Arthur Ashe

"So what exactly qualifies you to talk about courage, Jonathan?"

I froze for a second. I wasn't expecting this question.

I was at a networking event for expats in Mexico City.

We were going around the table doing introductions, the usual small talk about what everyone does.

When it got to me, I mentioned that I’m building a company to help people have more courage.

Then she leaned in.

"You're not a therapist, and you don’t have a degree in psychology, so what gives you the authority to tell people how to deal with fear?"

I immediately felt attacked.

The question came from a woman across the table who'd just finished her master's in psychology at an Ivy League university.

She wasn't asking to make conversation.

She was trying to expose me, and I could feel it.

Long story short: let’s just say I didn’t handle it as well as I could have.
To say the least, it was a learning experience for me.

I'd honestly never once stopped to ask myself whether I should be the one building DailyCourage.

My mission in life is to positively impact as many lives as possible. It’s the main reason why I left my job Apple.

I knew that I was meant to do more and I would never be able to achieve my goals if I didn’t pursue this path of mission-driven entrepreneurship. But, I’d be lying if I said that interaction in Mexico City didn’t have a meaningful impact on me.

It really stung. It definitely introduced some self-doubt for a while.

Thankfully, as fate would have it, I ended up hearing a keynote presentation that reaffirmed I was on the right path and had nothing to be insecure about.

The speech was from billionaire, Jim McKelvey, co-founder of Square (now Block).

The core of his presentation was that all progress is made by unqualified people.

In 2009 he was a glassblower in St. Louis, not a payments expert, not a banker, not an engineer at a financial firm.

A customer wanted to buy a $2,000 glass sculpture and couldn't, because McKelvey had no way to accept her card.

He lost the sale.

Frustrated, he called an old friend who used to intern for him back in the nineties, a kid who'd since gone on to co-found Twitter: Jack Dorsey.

Neither of them had ever built a payments company. That "unqualified" idea became Square, now Block, a business worth tens of billions of dollars. Every new problem gets solved by someone unqualified, McKelvey says, because you don't become qualified until after you've solved it once.

Once you start looking for this pattern, it shows up everywhere, in almost any field you can name:

Ten different industries. Ten different stories. The same starting condition every time: no one was qualified when they started.

Researchers estimate that up to 82 percent of people experience impostor feelings at some point, the sense that we haven't earned what we've built and that we'll eventually be found out. That number includes surgeons, professors, and founders running companies worth more than we'll ever see.

Feeling unqualified isn't a signal that you shouldn't start. It's just what starting feels like from the inside, for almost everybody.

McKelvey didn't set out to build a fintech giant. He set out to accept one credit card payment from one customer in Panama.

Kahlo didn't set out to become one of the most recognized painters in history. She set out to give herself something to do while she healed.

Rogan didn’t set out to become a media mogul. He just wanted to have interesting, unscripted and uncensored conversations with interesting people.

The cost of waiting is the part we don't talk about enough.

Every month we spend "getting ready" is a month the thing doesn't exist yet, a month somebody else doesn't get to read it, use it, buy it, or be helped by it.

Readiness is a story we tell ourselves to postpone the risk of trying and failing in public.

It feels like patience, but it's usually just fear wearing a nicer outfit.

So here's the lesson underneath McKelvey's line, and underneath every name on that list above. We’re never going to feel qualified first. Nobody does.

Qualification comes from doing the unqualified thing until it stops being unqualified.

The only real requirement was always the first move, taken by someone who didn't yet know if they could do it, and the willingness to keep going even when somebody at the table asks what gives you the right.

Here's your reflection for the week:

What's ONE thing you've told yourself you need "more of" before you can start: more time, more money, more experience, more certainty? Is that true, or is it a comfortable place to hide?

Here's your challenge for the week:

Ask yourself if you really need the prerequisites you think you need. Play Devil’s Advocate. Can you find ONE person that has achieved the goal you want to achieve without that prerequisite qualification?

With courage,

Jonathan