We were in the conference room again. The same cheap table and chairs occupying the edges of the room. We were all dressed like we were ready to run to the field at the first sign of trouble; something we’d become accustomed to, running our growing company like everything depended on us to accomplish.
This time, though, it wasn’t just the three ragtag executives of our company. The guru, with his matte black Lexus parked outside, was seated across the room from me. He carried the air of a guru — slow (sometimes), deliberate (mostly), like every word was part of some carefully crafted TED Talk.
If he’d walked in wearing a suit, I might have dismissed him in the first meeting, but instead he wore smart casual with penny loafers — and no socks.
Mr. Guru was going to change everything for us.
- Help us define why we were in business.
- Fix our culture.
- Optimize our decision-making.
- Streamline our hiring process.
You know — all the things consultants promise, but with more heavy breathing and wild hand gestures.
And to be fair, the first session didn’t feel like a scam. We talked about values. Our mission. Got a little introspective. He asked questions that made us think hard about our “why.” We answered. He challenged. I remember walking out of that meeting thinking, Maybe this won’t be terrible.
But week by week, things started to feel… off. His language got fluffier. He wanted us to track soft metrics using clunky software none of us understood — metrics he couldn’t really define either. (Awkward on both fronts.)
Eventually, he started showing up less and billing the same. (We now know this as shrinkflation.) Our CEO negotiated the rate down, and the “expert” cut his time again — to less than one visit a month.
Then one day — and I swear I’m not making this up — he called our CEO and screamed, “I’M A GOOD PERSON!” over and over, like he was trying to convince himself as much as us that his moral compass still pointed north. Or had a needle.
And that was the end of our ten-month “experience” with the guru.
Here’s the thing: I don’t really blame the guru — not entirely. He was doing what experts often do: selling clarity to people who feel stuck. Offering big promises, wrapped in buzzwords, that we wanted (maybe even needed) to believe.
I blame us a little. I didn’t hire the guy myself, but I wanted to believe he’d change things. Because I was tired, and I needed something to change.
I needed someone to show up with a mountaintop revelation that would make it all make sense for me. That somehow the years of sacrifice to build the company actually mattered.
And if I’m honest, sometimes I still do.
There’s this temptation to believe the idea that someone else can always hand you the answer. That there’s some system, some strategy, or some perfect checklist that will finally make everything feel (and actually be) less chaotic. That’s particularly true when you’re exhausted from the grind, from carrying too much for too long for too many people.
From never quite feeling like what you’ve done is adequate or enough.
In the months that followed our “guru phase,” I kept hoping that clarity would arrive at the office door the way it’s always advertised: clean, simple, and certain, and all for the low, low price of $4,999.99 a month. Instead, though, I kept waking up to the same calendar invites to meetings that would get agenda-hijacked in the first five minutes, the same sea of new emails, and the same ache in my shoulders (mostly my right one).
The whole experience left a weird taste in my mouth. It wasn’t just because of the spectacular dumpster-fire-flame-out at the end, but because of what it taught me about us. We were looking for someone to rescue us; not someone to teach us how to really strategize and plan. I suppose we were also looking for someone to reassure us that we were doing great, then hand us the magic recipe that would make all the hard parts go away in seven easy steps.
I suppose, more than anything, I wanted someone else to articulate something I couldn’t put into words: that I was tired of doing so much and still feeling like I was falling short.
I wonder if it’s innate in all of us to want the shortcut, the path of least resistance. I want someone with both authority and confidence (a “good person,” preferably) to point at the whiteboard and say, “Here. Do this, and everything will be better.”
Generally, that moment doesn’t come, not really.
To a degree, it’s a bit like someone handing you the blueprints to a house then you expecting the house to build itself. The plan won’t walk the walk or do the thing.
The guru won’t be there when your kids are throwing a tantrum in the background when you’re doing a virtual interview for the job you desperately need, or when the project you worked so hard on gets shelved by corporate, or when you’re sitting at your desk wondering why the work you used to love now sucks the life out of you.
No guru is going to fix that.
Look, I’m not against outside wisdom. I’ve learned so much from people who see things I can’t. But the best advice generally comes from the people who are walking with you, not from some guy wearing penny loafers and no socks. Great advice comes from people willing to ask you real questions and help you find your own way to the answers.
Lately, I keep coming back to one of my all-time favorite quotes from Despair.com:
If you can’t be a part of the solution, there’s good money to be made in prolonging the problem.
It’s kind of funny, but mostly unsettling, because it’s true. There’s an entire industry built on promising people like me that if we just pay enough, plan enough, journal enough, push hard enough, we’ll finally arrive. At balance. At success. At meaning.
We all know that’s not how things work most of the time, but somehow we still fall into the trap of wanting it so badly that we’re willing to put the blinders on.
I’m slowly learning to stop chasing mountaintop moments. I’m trying to notice what’s happening in the messy, repetitive, often mundane, but deeply human middle. It’s the part where our calendars fill up, and the to-do list feels like an obligation and a burden, and I’m still not quite sure what the right path looks like.
But I’m showing up. I’m still climbing toward the end of the canyon I can’t quite see.
I’m working on being less concerned with impressing anyone because what we do is not about getting some golden certificate of excellence from the universe, right?
For me, it’s a journey about learning to listen a little better, move just a little bit slower, and pay attention a little more closely to the things that make me feel more like myself; not like I’m a character in someone else’s success story.
That’s it for now. Just a quiet, stubborn return to the ground under my feet.
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