The Fork in the Road

In 2003, shortly after I’d volunteered for redundancy from my corporate career, a book came into my life that changed everything. “The eMyth Revisited by Micheal E Gerber”, it was a gift from a woman called Judith a friend, a mentor, and one of the most fabulous people I have ever known. She glued her business card inside the front cover. I read it in one sitting and I lit up like a Christmas tree. I didn’t know how. I didn’t know when. But I knew, with absolute certainty, that I would one day franchise or license a business I had created.

That book found me at a fork in the road.

When a Person Becomes the Fork

What I didn’t know at the time was that Judith herself would become a fork.

I met her at a Passive Investments event. The property investment itself turned out to be one of the worst financial decisions I have ever made, it cost me over £100,000 with no return. But had I not walked through that door, I would never have met Judith. And my life would be unrecognisably different.

The Forks That Shape a Life

At her funeral, her brother spoke about the forks in the road of Judith’s life: the ones she took and the ones she didn’t, the good and the bad, and how each of them had shaped everything that came after. He spoke of it with a tenderness that has stayed with me for two years.

I have thought about it almost every week since.

The Myth of Perfect Timing

Because here is what I know to be true: the conditions are never going to be perfect. They weren’t perfect when I remortgaged my home, took out a loan, and paid myself a nominal wage to create Athena. I had two sons in college living at home. The timing was, by most people’s standards, terrible. And yet I took that fork. Not because I had certainty about the outcome, but because I had clarity about what I wanted to create and why it mattered to me.

The Fork You Are Standing At

Every one of us has a fork in the road we are standing at right now. Some of us are aware of it. Some of us have been circling it for months, perhaps years, telling ourselves the story that the time isn’t right. That we need more money. More confidence. More certainty. Better conditions. That when the circumstances improve, then we’ll move.

But the circumstances are not the point. They never were.

The Question That Matters

The question worth sitting with is this: what is the thing you are not doing because the conditions aren’t ideal? And if you keep not doing it, five years from now, ten years from now, how will that feel?

Which One Will You Take?

I think about Judith’s brother. I think about that tenderness, the sadness in his voice. His words reminds me to notice the forks

Which one will you take?