This week has been transformative.  Yesterday, I sat down with Cliff Illig for over three hours to talk about Neal Patterson (featured change deviant in my book). For those of you outside Kansas City, Cliff Illig is the Co-Founder of Cerner Corporation (retired, but still the largest shareholder),  Owner of Sporting Kansas City, and one of the city's most prolific venture capitalists.  This isn't the first time Illig and I have met.  Our paths crossed multiple times while I worked at Cerner.  However, this conversation was the most personal I've ever had with him.

If I had to summarize the theme of this week it would be: humbled and grateful.  

After my interview with Cliff, I took the longest bubble bath of my adult life and I listened to the recording of our session.  Cliff is an ideator.   When you leave a conversation with him you have pages of notes and diagrams drawn in blue Sharpie markers.   He challenges my theories, tells me when he thinks I'm wrong, and pushes me to the next level.  Every now and then I talk over him to get a word in edge-wise, and he lets me reframe a preconceived idea he has.  While he is brilliant and views things through a larger lens than I do-he has never stopped learning.    He welcomes interruption when it's a worthy one. Cliff is also a vibrant story-teller.  He paints the words in the sky and leaves them there for you to find (to quote my favorite Katie Herzig song). His relationship with Neal could only be described as a life partnership and his insight into their co- navigation of change is nothing short of poetic.

Next week I'll be finishing Neal's chapter and additional work on my manuscript.  I'll be hiding at a hotel in Kansas City to escape from all the distractions of entrepreneur life.  Publishers I'm interested in working with have requested my full manuscript to review.  So, I'm escalating my timeline and pushing myself harder.  

In the meantime, not only am I grateful and humbled for this week...that sentiment is extended to you for following along with me on this journey.

Humbled & Grateful,

Liesl