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True Believers 13

Finally, Doug said, “Jay, there’s something here I don’t know. This
is a good promotion for you. Hell of an opportunity. More money than
you’re making now. And I know you’d love to work for me. What am
I missing?”

J.C. paused.
“I’m going to tell you something, and I hope you won’t use it
against me,” he said. “I’m going to leave the bank and start a new com-
pany in eleven months. I can’t commit to anything new. You need
somebody who’s going to stick around.”
In two minutes, J.C. Faulkner had violated two fundamental rules
of corporate success: Don’t turn down promotions, and don’t share your exit
plans with a higher-level leader. But one of the bank’s top executives had
flushed him out. “I had a trust level with him,” J.C. later remembered.
“He’s the only guy above me that I would have told about my plans.”
Looking back, J.C. remembers this as his point of no return, the mo-
ment that he knew for sure: He was going to risk everything he’d
earned over the past twelve years and leap into an uncertain future as
an entrepreneur.5

Fanning the Flames of Commitment

Few things in life are as packed with emotion as hurtling down the
startup path just beyond the point of no return. Even the most con-
tained entrepreneur feels like he or she has a tiny Archimedes inside,
running with happy abandon. There is much to decide and do—hun-
dreds of tasks and questions, large and small. Underneath these prac-
tical matters, the founder’s growing commitment to the venture is
helped along by a set of gathering forces. These forces have been in
play all along, like breezes blowing over the first flame of the
founder’s idea to keep it alive. But now that the point of no return
has been reached, they are like winds blowing in from all directions,
oxygenating and heating the growing fire.

American Management Association • www.amanet.org