I’ve been wanting to restart my Substack for months.

And every single time I sat down to write, something always interrupted the momentum. A deadline. A meeting. More meetings. Another responsibility. A project. Another founder call. My train of thought paused and then fizzled away. Then another “important thing” that felt more urgent than sitting down and writing something from my heart and brings me so much joy.

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You know the feeling.

It’s 8 PM.You’re shutting down your computer. FINALLY.Your brain is exhausted.And the thing you wanted to create for yourself gets pushed to tomorrow … again.

Life gets in the way.Deadlines become the priority.And your to-do list slowly starts having a stronger hold on your dreams than your joy does.

So today I decided not to overthink it.

Not to make it perfectly strategic or overly technical or complicated.Not to make it perfectly polished within an inch of its life. Not to sit here trying to optimize every sentence.

I just wanted to write again.

Because there is joy in creating.There is exponential joy in sharing value.

There is joy in bringing people together around ideas, purpose, innovation, leadership, faith, and hope and helping people think differently, feel encouraged, feel seen, feel equipped.

And honestly, Substack feels like the perfect place for me to merge all the different parts of who I am:

* professor,

* investor,

* ecosystem builder,

* entrepreneur,

* prayer warrior,

* strategist,

* futurist,

* mentor,

* servant leader,

* community builder,

* and somebody who genuinely believes goodness still matters in business.

So here I am. Trying again.

And maybe that’s the point.

Calling

Calling is a word that sounds really simple when somebody else says it and it feels very natural for some people.

For me, it is deeply spiritual.

I am humbly at the feet of my Lord and Savior trying to do His work in whatever spaces He places me in. I pray continuously. I ask for discernment constantly. My calling is ultimately His plan for my life, not mine. It’s simple. I like it that way because I have days that are filled with multiple meetings, long list of to-do’s, many are minute details and some pieces of long projects. I ask for discernment from the Lord constantly. My calling is not something I manufactured, it is something I steward.

But understanding that calling clearly?That has taken me years.

Because to understand your calling, you have to get very honest with yourself.

You have to ask:What actually makes me come alive?What makes me joyful, not just temporarily happy?What keeps me going through difficult seasons?What comes naturally to me that maybe I’ve minimized for years, so much to make ot insignificant?

And for the last couple of months, honestly maybe the last year, I’ve been wrestling deeply with those questions.

Because my career has felt layered.

Like a giant lasagna of experiences layered on top of each other:

* entrepreneurship,

* venture capital,

* angel investing,

* academia,

* nonprofit leadership,

* accelerators,

* ecosystem building,

* startup advising,

* conferences,

* innovation programs,

* writing,

* speaking, TEDx talks, keynotes, panels

* mentoring, advising, coaching

* serving.

Some days it feels beautifully cohesive and interconnected.

Other days it feels completely all over the place.

I’ve been told I’m “too multi-lane.”That I am too relational.Too visionary.Too “nice”.Too broad.Too optimistic.Too encouraging.Too emotionally invested in people.

And if you hear those things long enough, imposter syndrome eventually becomes loud enough to drown out your calling, it gets blown out the front door because of the perceived insignificance of the very thing that brings you significance.

But over the last year, I’ve realized something transformative:

The very things I once thought were weaknesses are actually the clearest indicators of my calling.

The Journey Was Never Random

When I look back at my life, I now see that nothing was random. God had a beautiful and honoring plan all along.

I have been an entrepreneur who made money and lost money.

I have launched products, services, packages and bundles.

I have curated events, investor networks, sparked movements.

I have launched 5 accelerators, nonprofit initiatives.

I have produced educational programs, podcasts and innovative projects.

I have engaged in multiple startup ecosystems.

I’ve had moments standing on TEDx stages wondering how in the world I got there.

And I’ve also had moments kneeling on the floor asking God why certain things were happening at all.

I have watched portfolio companies fail.

I have watched companies exit. Small and big exits alike.

I have watched founders merge into larger organizations while terrified of losing themselves in the process.

I have seen entrepreneurs soar.

I have seen entrepreneurs break.

And through all of it, one truth remained constant:

I genuinely love walking alongside people as they create & build something meaningful.

That’s it.

That’s the calling.

Not simply investing in startups.Not simply teaching entrepreneurship.Not simply building startup ecosystems.

But helping people flourish through the journey of building & innovating.

That’s the thing that keeps showing up over and over again in every season of my life.

That’s the difference.

That is my calling.

The Coffee Meeting

Oddly enough, one of the clearest places I see my calling is in something very simple:

The coffee meeting.

For years, I’ve taught that the coffee meeting is one of the most important parts of angel investing and ecosystem building because trust is the currency of startup ecosystems, investing and innovation.

Not transactions.Not valuations.Not cap tables.

Not status.Not titles.

Trust.

And coffee meetings are where trust starts & is stewarded one cup at a time.

It’s where people exhale a little bit.Where founders stop pitching and start sharing.Where patterns emerge.Where intuition, discernment, curiosity, wisdom, and honesty all start showing up naturally.

It’s where people feel seen.

And I realized recently that one of my greatest strengths has never actually been JUST evaluating companies for the tactical pieces (which I do very well at if I do say so myself).

It’s evaluating human potential.

I see people before pedigree.

I see character before credentials.

I see conviction before status.

I see bright, overlooked, underestimated people and instinctively want to help amplify their light.

For years, people joked that I “collect stray cats.”

And honestly?I used to think that was criticism and I focused on how to fix me.

Now I see it as confirmation and I abundantly claim my calling & work on amplifying it.

Servant Leadership Is Not Weakness

I spent years minimizing the way I lead because I thought softness would be interpreted as weakness in business.

But I don’t believe that anymore. I fully reject that narrative and instead embrace Jesus’ plan and purpose for my life through the fruits of the Spirit, the nine attributes of a godly life stewarded by the Holy Spirit through constant prayer and supplication in believers: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. (Galatians 5:22-23)

Kindness is not weakness.Joy is not weakness.Empathy is not weakness.Gentleness is not weakness.Servant leadership is not weakness.

It’s actually strategy.

It builds trust.It builds culture.It builds resilient organizations.It builds long-term flourishing.

And the more years I spend in venture, angel investing, entrepreneurship, academia, and now ethical AI research, the more convinced I become that human flourishing is not separate from business performance & success.

It is foundational to it. It is sustainable leadership.

* The strongest founders are often deeply empathetic.

* The best investors are thoughtful listeners.

* The healthiest organizations understand dignity and belonging.

* The best leaders know how to balance conviction with humility.

* The healthiest cultures are mission-aligned.

* The most enduring ecosystems are collaborative.

And the companies that endure are usually the ones that understand relationships are multipliers of growth.

I’m Finally Embracing the Fullness of Who I Am

People close to me often call me a futurist.

For years, I resisted that.

I saw myself simply as somebody who worked hard.

But now I understand that part of my calling is seeing patterns before they fully emerge:

* seeing ecosystems before they fully form,

* seeing people’s potential before they see it themselves,

* seeing how innovation, faith, ethics, creativity, investing, education, and leadership converge into entirely new possibilities.

I leverage social capital for good.

I’m a super connector. I connect people strategically.

Not in the shallow networking sense.But in the deeply relational, strategic, meaningful sense where you genuinely want people to flourish together.

I think that’s why books like Never Eat Alone resonated so much with me over the years. Because relationships are not transactional to me. They are stewardship.

It’s about:

* how many people you help,

* how many people you encourage,

* how many people you pray for,

* how many people you shepherd,

* and how many people walk away from interacting with you feeling more hopeful than before.

That matters deeply to me.

I build bridges between worlds that often don’t talk to each other:

* founders and investors,

* academia and industry,

* ethics and AI,

* faith and innovation,

* startups and flourishing.

And increasingly, I believe that this ability to connect seemingly disconnected dots is exactly where my calling lives.

Human Flourishing

The deeper I go into this next chapter of my life, the more one phrase keeps resurfacing:

Human flourishing.

Not survival.Not hustle culture.Not burnout disguised as ambition.

Flourishing.

I believe innovation should support human flourishing.I believe investing should support human flourishing.I believe leadership should support human flourishing.I believe technology, especially AI, must be developed with human dignity at the center.

And I believe ecosystems flourish when people feel:

* safe,

* seen,

* encouraged,

* challenged honestly,

* supported strategically,

* connected meaningfully,

* and empowered to become more fully themselves.

This is why I care so deeply about servant leadership, ethical innovation, mindful investing, founder wellbeing, ecosystem building, and values-aligned capital.

Because we cannot innovate our way into a better future if we diminish the humans building it.

That is the kind of future I want to help build.

Such a Time as This

This past year has been one of the most pivotal years of my life.

All the winding roads suddenly make sense:

The successes.The failures.The pivots.The exits.The universities.The nonprofits.The accelerators.The funds.The communities.The stages.The heartbreaks.The prayers.

All of it mattered.

Every footprint, deep or shallow, became part of this larger sandbox of creativity, innovation, investing, leadership, and service.

And God was preparing all of it for such a time as this.

And for the first time in a long time, I’m no longer apologizing for the fullness of who I am.

I am embracing it. Praying over it and through it.

Fully.

A Rally Cry for Calling

This is my return to creating from conviction instead of perfection.

To speaking more boldly.To writing more honestly.To fully embracing the calling God placed on my life instead of minimizing it to make others comfortable.

I’m no longer shrinking the parts of myself that are deeply relational, hopeful, creative, faith-filled, visionary, or emotionally invested in people and their flourishing. Those are not distractions from my work. They are the work. I am good, I am grounded in deep faith & conviction.

I believe now more than ever that dignity, wisdom, joy, creativity, generosity, and goodness are not weaknesses in leadership or business.

They are differentiators.

They are the very things that create trust, transformation, innovation, and lasting impact.

And if you’ve ever felt too emotional, too multi-passionate, too caring, too different, too optimistic, too faith-driven, or too much for the spaces you occupy, maybe the thing you’ve been trying to suppress is actually the clearest sign of your calling.

Maybe your softness is strength.Maybe your joy is strategy.Maybe your empathy is leadership.Maybe your ability to connect people, ideas, hope, and vision is exactly what this world needs right now.

I don’t believe we are called to simply survive this season of history. I believe we are called to build, encourage, innovate, steward, and flourish through it together.

So this is my rally cry:to create boldly,to lead with integrity,to encourage relentlessly,to connect people meaningfully,to steward influence responsibly,and to amplify goodness loudly in a world that desperately needs more light.

I’m stepping fully into that calling now.

I’m embracing the courage to flourish.

For such a time as this.

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