Jerry Colonna tells host Utkarsh Narang why pretending you have it all figured out is dangerous. A flu that landed him in the emergency room forced him to quit finance and seek coaching. His mantra: the work is in you, not in following someone else's script.
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This idea of finding life is set at that point, that's the journey we're going to be on. I think it kind of— I've observed it kind of limits us. But, uh, in hindsight, how do you feel about that moment when you felt like, I figured it out, I've landed in the right places now?
Well, I mean, I think a lot about the Joseph Campbell quote: if you can see your path all the way through to the end, you are following someone else's path. Your path only becomes clear moment by moment as each foot hits the And in business school, I got all turned around and I focused in finance and accounting and strategy because that's what the cool kids did. And I exited to PricewaterhouseCoopers on the so-called 5-year, you know, fast track to partnership. So I kind of thought my life was all set at that point.
Yeah, yeah. This, this idea of finding life is set at that point, that's the journey we're going to be on, I think it kind of— I've observed it kind of limits us But, uh, in hindsight, how do you feel about that moment when you felt like, I figured it out, I've landed in the right places now?
Well, I mean, I think a lot about the Joseph Campbell quote: if you can see your path all the way through to the end, you are following someone else's path. Your path only becomes clear moment by moment as each, as each foot hits the ground. And I— that was me. I saw my path all the way through to the end, and I was definitely following someone else's path. And so one day I woke up On a Sunday and I thought, I hope I don't have to go into work tomorrow. Hope I get the flu so I don't have to go into work tomorrow. And I got the flu. 18 hours later, I was rushed to the emergency room. Yeah, it was very dramatic. And I was down for the count for 2 weeks. And then I realized this is not it. This is not what I wanna do. And then I had to seek out what is it? And that took a lot of seeking and a lot of, you know, searching. And it was like very challenging, but that's when I met the coach and I was like, that's what I wanna do.
As you're going through that phase, you know, there are millions around the world and we can promote being an entrepreneur and we can promote becoming a founder or having like a full-time corporate job. It could be anything, but there could be dissatisfaction with any of the roles that we're playing in that moment. What does it mean to be a seeker trying to understand that dissatisfaction and shift it in certain ways? What does that mean?
Well, I mean, for me, it just means thinking a lot and contemplating sometimes to a fault. I can kind of overthink things and get overly dramatic about like, oh, woe is me about, you know, things that are going on. And I think though, what it means is that ultimately, I guess I would speak for myself, like one of my values is the truth. So I seek the truth. I wanna know what's real. And so I wanna discover, I wanna understand, I wanna question. And so through all of that, I think that is kind of what animates the seeking that I do. And, you know, I think there's a lot of ways to do it. You can write in your journal, you can have have conversations with, you know, friends or professionals. But ultimately, I think it's about all of us trying to find our own path.
Yeah. And then, uh, in one of your newsletters, which I, uh, read every time you send it, I think the statement that's kind of stuck with me is, the work is in you.
Yeah.
Yeah. Can you say more to— more to that, that statement? Because it's a very powerful statement. The work is in you. But people, I feel, find it really discomforting. to think about their own selves or to question themselves or to really pause and introspect. Where are we going? What's happening with our life? Because there's, there's just tremendous noise on the outside. So how do you, how do you really figure out that the work is in you?
You know, I was, before I wrote my book, I was just sort of pulling my ideas together and I talked to a writer and we were discussing all of these ideas that I had together and we were talking about it and he was sort of asking me, so How do you start with this kind of client? And I said, well, you know, first we assess what's going on inside of them. Well, how do you start with this kind of client? Well, first we assess what's going on inside of them, et cetera, et cetera. And he kept saying, it feels like you always start by figuring out what's going on inside of them. I said, yeah, because the work is in you. And he said, huh, that almost sounds like a book title. And so I was like, yeah. So as you may or may not know, I actually did a rap music video called The Work Is in You. Which is widely available, readily available on YouTube. And, you know, I just really think that for all of us, it all starts with you. My book, my book From Startup to Grown-Up, is divided into 3 sections: managing yourself, managing them, and managing the organization. And so it starts with you, because you as a new client may come to me and tell me, oh, I have a problem with this individual.
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