Podcast · 51 min listen (full transcript available)

Can You Really Bring Your Whole Self to Work? (Jerry Colonna)

Jerry Colonna, interviewed by Krista Tippett · On Being Free Intermediate

Colonna is the VC-turned-coach founders actually trust on this, and here he tells it from the inside: after losing his all-defining job he found that the more the world applauded his doing, the more his soul ached, because there was no self left underneath the title. His answer, radical self-inquiry (Who is the person I have been all my life?), is the practical work of building identities the startup cannot touch. A first-hand account from a credible founder-coach, not theory.

  • Colonna's own collapse came from having an all-defining job: when the world loved his doing, his soul ached because there was nothing underneath the doing
  • Radical self-inquiry (Who is the person I have been all my life?) is how you find the self that exists independent of the company
  • Denying your full humanity at work cuts you off from your own creativity, so an identity beyond the startup is not indulgence, it is fuel
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The question it answers

  1. How do I stop my identity from being completely fused to my startup so a bad week doesn't feel like I'm worthless?

Read with it

  1. This is the clearest naming of the exact trap in the question: Gorman, a therapist who works with founders, calls it identity... Ingmar Gorman (psychotherapist for entrepreneurs) Article · 10 min read When the Startup Becomes You: Burnout, Founders' Identity, and Therapy for Entrepreneurs Ingmar Gorman, PhD
  2. This is the Indian version of the exact spiral the question is about, in founders' own words. Purushartha Saini (IIT Bombay,... Entrepreneur India Article · 9 min read Depression, Fear, Failure & Isolation: The Other Side Of Entrepreneurship Entrepreneur India staff (with Purushartha Saini, Jyoti Agarwal, Chaitanya Ramalingegowda)
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