Day One Complete: The Growth is Real

Well, yesterday was day one of my new job, and I'm going to be honest with you, I had all the feels.

I'm in a new industry (healthcare), working in a new space (SaaS), working fully remote, which is something I haven't done since 2022, and with a company where I have no friends, connections, or referrals that got me in the door. So I can't even Slack someone and say, "Hey, what's going on here?"

The first week of any new job is basically you sitting around wondering if you're doing enough to make everyone happy they hired you, while simultaneously trying to look busy enough to prove you're actually doing something, even though you don't know jack shit about anything.

I spent the last ten years in the real estate business between proptech and brokerage, and I was ready to be done. I genuinely made an effort to try and leave real estate and find something new. I grew somewhat tired of all the same players just circulating roles in an industry that fluctuates up and down with the market. When times are good, real estate is amazing. When times are bad, everyone gets laid off or restructured. It's not fun.

I wanted a new challenge, and I'm super excited for the opportunity I've been given, but that doesn't mean I get to just log on the first week and it's all easy; it's not.

I have this conversation with my son quite often. For some reason, he thinks that everything in life should just be easy and that the first time he goes to do anything, it should come naturally. Spoiler: it doesn't, because that's not real life. He wants to be an expert driver the first time behind the wheel. He wants to be a star football player in year two. He wants to be a math whiz when he's still earning. The list goes on.

We had a whole conversation last night about how even I am feeling a little anxious, uneasy, and somewhat stressed by a brand new job.

The reality is, being uncomfortable doesn't mean you're doing something wrong. Sometimes it means you're exactly where you're supposed to be. I left an industry I knew incredibly well, where I knew the language, knew the players, knew the business models, and knew how everything worked.

You can be incredibly confident in your ability to figure something out while simultaneously having absolutely no idea how you're going to figure it out yet.

Now I'm back to asking basic questions, taking notes on things everyone else seems to understand, and trying to connect dots that probably feel painfully obvious to the people around me.

That's humbling, but it's also the whole fucking point.

You don't get growth by constantly putting yourself in situations where you already know the answers. You grow when you're willing to walk into a room where you're not the expert, where you have to listen more than you talk, and where you have to accept that for a little while, you're probably going to feel behind.

I think sometimes in our careers we confuse confidence with certainty. We think successful people walk into every new opportunity completely sure of themselves, immediately know what they're doing, and never wonder whether they made the right decision. That's bullshit. You can be incredibly confident in your ability to figure something out while simultaneously having absolutely no idea how you're going to figure it out yet.

So if you're starting something new, changing industries, taking on a bigger role, joining a new company, or doing anything that currently makes you feel like you don't know jack, give yourself some room to be new. You don't have to prove your entire value in week one. Your job isn't to immediately know everything. Your job is to learn, pay attention, ask good questions, build relationships, and trust that eventually the things that feel foreign today will become the things you barely have to think about tomorrow.