The Urbana Champaign Angel Network is a group of early-stage investors focused primarily on technology startups in the Central Illinois area. I’ve joined the group as an investor. Local entrepreneurs seeking investment capital present business ideas to the group once per quarter.

I love entrepreneurship (with a passion) and I’m eager to engage with investors and entrepreneurs who love it too.

Today I’m doing what I’ve done just four times before. I’m filing paperwork to create a new business. In this business I intend to engage as a coach, consultant, and facilitator with people, in service to their success. As a young CEO, in over my head, I reached out for a lot of coaching and human development experiences, and loved them. I still have multiple coaches and mentors. I’ve learned I can also be of service to others, and I love paying that forward.

Some people I admire have given me some very kind endorsements. And here’s some info about services I’m offering.

There’s a ton of uncertainty in what I’m starting, and I feel it. The outcomes were just as uncertain the last four times, and I felt it then too. Those turned out to be some of the best and most life-changing decisions I’ve made so far.

I’ve never regretted sucking up the fear and going forward into something I wanted to do. I don’t think you will regret doing that either. Cheers.

This is how the Sears store in my local mall looked this morning. All of a sudden, it’s empty. It’s sobering to me to see the slow fall of a once-dominant company.

Rise and fall is the pattern of history. What goes up must come down. As leaders we set out everyday to beat gravity for a little longer.

Let’s not be complacent based on past success. Let’s not pretend change will avoid us if we ignore it. Let’s be intentional about where we want to end up and what we want to do between the rise and the fall.