- 2 days ago
You start in stiff shoes with a sticky note login, and 43 years later you watch a new 22 year old take your place. This is one life lived through all ten ranks of leadership. How far up the ladder would you really want to climb?
Every episode takes a lot of research and writing. Drop your next video idea in the comments. I read them all.
Subscribe so you don't miss the next one! 🔔
VIDEO TOPICS/TIMESTAMPS:
0:00 The New Hire
2:30 The Team Lead
4:54 The Manager
7:22 The Senior Manager
9:53 The Director
12:24 The Vice President
15:01 The Senior Vice President
17:31 The Chief Operating Officer
19:55 The Chief Executive Officer
22:24 The Chairman
Every episode takes a lot of research and writing. Drop your next video idea in the comments. I read them all.
Subscribe so you don't miss the next one! 🔔
VIDEO TOPICS/TIMESTAMPS:
0:00 The New Hire
2:30 The Team Lead
4:54 The Manager
7:22 The Senior Manager
9:53 The Director
12:24 The Vice President
15:01 The Senior Vice President
17:31 The Chief Operating Officer
19:55 The Chief Executive Officer
22:24 The Chairman
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:00Level 1. The New Hire.
00:02You're 22 years old.
00:03You just graduated with a degree you're still paying off.
00:06You have a backpack and a head full of ideas.
00:09You walk into the office on your first Monday morning.
00:12You wear shoes that are too stiff and squeak on the tile.
00:15You wear a shirt your mother ironed the night before.
00:18Someone shows you to a desk in the corner.
00:20The desk has a chair, a monitor, and a yellow sticky note.
00:24The sticky note has your temporary login scrawled across it.
00:28Nobody tells you what you're supposed to do.
00:30So you wait.
00:31You watch.
00:33You learn the names of people who won't learn yours for months.
00:36You are the very bottom of the org chart.
00:39You have no one reporting to you.
00:41You report in some small way to almost everyone.
00:45Your job is the work nobody above you wants to do.
00:48You build the spreadsheet that someone else will present.
00:51You take the notes nobody reads.
00:53You fetch the numbers and format the slides.
00:56You book the rooms and order the lunch.
00:59You sit in meetings where decisions get made without you.
01:02Nobody asks your opinion and you don't offer it.
01:05You raise your hand once, then put it back down.
01:08You learn that the org chart is not a suggestion.
01:11There is a name above your name.
01:13There is another name above that one.
01:15The arrows on the chart all point up.
01:17You are at the very bottom of every single arrow.
01:21You do good work.
01:22You do it fast.
01:23You stay late when nobody asks you to.
01:26You answer emails at midnight just to seem reliable.
01:29You think hard work alone will be enough to carry you.
01:32You think the best worker always rises to the top.
01:35That isn't quite how it works.
01:37But you don't know that yet and nobody warns you.
01:40You watch your manager run the team.
01:43He seems powerful from where you're sitting.
01:45He decides things that change everyone's week.
01:47People stop talking and listen the moment he speaks.
01:51You want that for yourself someday.
01:53You don't understand yet what that power costs a person.
01:57You go home to a small apartment with a roommate.
01:59You eat cheap food and you sleep deeply.
02:02Your problems are still small and simple.
02:05They belong only to you and nobody else.
02:08You don't yet carry anyone else's weight.
02:10You have no idea how heavy other people get.
02:13Your parents call to ask how the new job is going.
02:16You tell them it's great.
02:17You actually mean it.
02:19You're at the beginning of something long.
02:21A ladder stretches up above you into the dark.
02:24You can't see the top of it from here.
02:26You start to climb anyway.
02:28Everyone does.
02:29Level 2.
02:31The Team Lead
02:32Four years pass faster than you expect.
02:35You don't get promoted because you asked for it.
02:37You get promoted because your manager quit suddenly.
02:40Someone had to hold the work together.
02:42That someone turned out to be you.
02:45They give you a title with little extra pay.
02:47Team Lead
02:48You're 26 years old now.
02:50You have three people who technically report to you.
02:54None of them is impressed by your new title.
02:56Two of them are older than you.
02:58One of them quietly wanted your job.
03:00You learn your first lesson about leadership fast.
03:03The work itself was always the easy part.
03:06The people are the hard part.
03:08You can no longer just do the task yourself.
03:11You have to get someone else to do it instead.
03:13You explain it carefully.
03:15You check it when they're done.
03:16You quietly fix it when it comes back wrong.
03:20Telling someone what to do is the simple part.
03:22Getting them to do it well is the entire job.
03:25You make mistakes early and often.
03:28You micromanage everything because you don't trust anyone yet.
03:32Your small team quietly resents you for it.
03:34So you overcorrect and back off too far.
03:38Then the work slips and your boss notices.
03:40You slowly learn to find the middle ground.
03:43You learn that trust gets built slowly.
03:46You start dating someone you met at a wedding in June.
03:49Her name is Sarah.
03:50She's smart and patient and laughs easily.
03:53She asked how your day was over dinner.
03:55You honestly don't know how to explain it to her.
03:58Managing three people is harder than doing the work of ten.
04:02You're tired in a brand new way.
04:04Not physically tired.
04:06Mentally tired.
04:07In a way sleep doesn't fix.
04:09You carry other people's problems home with you now.
04:12You lie awake over a deadline that isn't even yours.
04:15It belongs to your team.
04:17And that means it belongs to you.
04:19You're starting to understand what leadership means.
04:21It means owning outcomes you can't fully control.
04:25You're responsible for results made by hands that aren't yours.
04:29It's a strange and uncomfortable feeling at first.
04:32You don't love it.
04:33But you turn out to be quietly good at it.
04:36You give clear, calm instructions.
04:38You don't panic when things break.
04:40People start to look to you when they get stuck.
04:43Your boss notices that about you too.
04:45Being good at it means they'll give you more.
04:48More people.
04:49More weight to carry.
04:50You say yes without fully thinking it through.
04:54Level three.
04:55The manager.
04:56Two more years go by in a blur.
04:58The team keeps growing around you.
05:00They give you a real title now with a raise.
05:03Manager.
05:05You're 30 years old.
05:06You have eight people reporting directly to you.
05:09You married Sarah last spring in a small ceremony.
05:11She's pregnant with your first child now.
05:13A boy, the doctor tells you both.
05:16You feel two different kinds of weight now.
05:18One at home, waiting for you.
05:20One at work, following you home.
05:22They pull you in opposite directions every day.
05:25Being a manager is different from being a team lead.
05:28As a lead, you are one of them with a little extra.
05:31As a manager, you are something separate from the group.
05:35You're the line between the team and everyone above them.
05:39Information flows down through you to the people below.
05:42Complaints flow up through you to the people above.
05:45You're a filter, a translator, and a shield at once.
05:48And sometimes, when things go wrong, you're the target.
05:52You learn how to run a proper one-on-one.
05:55You sit across from each person every two weeks.
05:58You ask how they're really doing.
06:00Some of them open up to you honestly.
06:02Some of them look you in the eye and lie.
06:05You slowly learn to tell the difference.
06:07You sit through your first real performance review.
06:10You have to tell a man he isn't meeting expectations.
06:13He has a wife and a family at home.
06:15He has a mortgage and two kids in school.
06:18You see a version of yourself in that chair.
06:20Your hands sweat under the table where he can't see.
06:23You say the hard words to him anyway.
06:25The company needs them said, and you say them.
06:28You learn that leadership means delivering pain,
06:31even to good people who didn't deserve it.
06:34Especially, somehow, to the good people.
06:37You also make your first real hire that quarter.
06:40You sit across from a nervous kid in stiff shoes.
06:42You remember being exactly that kid not long ago.
06:46You decide to give him a chance.
06:47He turns out to be one of your best.
06:50That feels better than finishing any spreadsheet ever did.
06:53You're starting to understand the trade you've made.
06:56You used to make things with your own hands.
06:58Now you make people who make the things.
07:00The output isn't yours anymore.
07:02It's theirs.
07:03Your only job is to make theirs better.
07:06Your son is born that winter on a cold night.
07:09You hold him in the hospital at three in the morning.
07:11You quietly promise him you'll always be present.
07:14You mean it completely in that exhausted moment.
07:17You have no idea how hard that promise will be.
07:20You'll learn.
07:22Level 4.
07:23The Senior Manager
07:25Five years pass, and your life fills up.
07:28Your son is four years old now.
07:30You have a daughter, too, born two years later.
07:33She's two years old and into everything.
07:36Sarah went back to work part-time.
07:38The house is loud from the moment you wake.
07:41The mornings are pure, exhausting chaos.
07:44You're 35 years old.
07:46They promote you to Senior Manager that spring.
07:49Now you don't manage the workers directly anymore.
07:51You manage the managers who manage the workers.
07:55This is a completely different game.
07:57The people reporting to you have their own people.
07:59You're two full layers removed from the actual work.
08:03You can't see the real work anymore.
08:05You have to trust the layer right below you.
08:08You have to trust them to tell you the truth.
08:10Some of them do exactly that.
08:12Some of them only tell you what you want to hear.
08:15You learn to read between the lines of a report.
08:17You learn which managers sugarcoat their bad news.
08:20You learn which ones panic too early over nothing.
08:23You learn to always ask the second question.
08:26The real one.
08:27Hiding behind the first polite answer.
08:30You're managing entirely through other people now.
08:33Your decisions ripple outward in ways you can't see.
08:35A choice you make on a quiet Tuesday changes 40 weeks.
08:39You'll never even speak to most of those people.
08:41You feel the distance growing beneath your feet.
08:44You miss doing the work sometimes.
08:46You miss finishing a task with your own hands.
08:49Now your whole day is meetings about other meetings.
08:52You align people who don't want to be aligned.
08:55You coordinate.
08:56You unblock.
08:57You've become a connector of other people's effort.
09:00At home, you start missing the things that matter.
09:03You miss the game because a client escalated.
09:06You miss bedtime because a deadline slipped.
09:09Sarah doesn't say much about any of it.
09:11But you see what she's thinking in her face.
09:13You promise yourself, again, that it's only temporary.
09:16The next level up will surely be easier.
09:19You truly believe that when you say it.
09:21You're wrong.
09:22But that belief is the engine that keeps you climbing.
09:26Your son asks one night why you're always on the phone.
09:29You don't have a good answer for him.
09:31You ruffle his hair and change the subject.
09:33You tell yourself you're doing all of this for them.
09:36The house.
09:37The schools.
09:38The future you're building.
09:39That part of it is genuinely true.
09:42But it isn't the whole truth.
09:43And you know it.
09:44You like the climb itself.
09:46You like the quiet power that comes with each rung.
09:49You don't admit that part out loud to anyone.
09:53Level 5.
09:54The Director.
09:55Five more years go by quietly.
09:58You're 40 years old now.
10:00Your son is 9.
10:01Your daughter is 7.
10:03Time moves differently once you cross this line.
10:05It moves fast.
10:07And it doesn't slow down for anyone.
10:09They make you a director that year.
10:11You run an entire department now.
10:14A hundred people sit somewhere beneath your name.
10:16You have a budget for the first time.
10:18A real one.
10:19With a lot of zeros.
10:21You're personally responsible for every dollar of it.
10:24You stop thinking about individual tasks.
10:27You start thinking about strategy and direction.
10:29The question is no longer,
10:31how do we do this thing?
10:33The question becomes,
10:34what should we even be doing?
10:36You set the direction for everyone below you.
10:39You decide where the department points for the next year.
10:42You pick the bets the team will live or die on.
10:45You kill the projects that aren't working out.
10:47You kill some of the ones that people love.
10:50You learn that direction means disappointing people.
10:53You do it for the greater good of the whole.
10:55Or at least, that's the story you tell them.
10:58You sit in rooms with other hungry directors.
11:01You compete with them for limited resources.
11:03There's only so much budget to go around.
11:06There's only so much headcount to fight over.
11:08You fight hard for your team's fair share.
11:11You finally learn the politics of the place.
11:13Who quietly has real influence?
11:16Who owes whom an unspoken favor?
11:18Whose word actually carries weight in the room?
11:21You used to think politics was a dirty word.
11:24Now you understand it in a clearer way.
11:26It's simply how groups of people make hard decisions.
11:29You can refuse to play the game on principle.
11:32But then you lose.
11:33And your team loses with you.
11:35So you play.
11:36You play it carefully.
11:38And you play it to win.
11:40Your marriage is visibly strained by now.
11:43You and Sarah have a hard, quiet talk one night.
11:45She tells you that you're never really present.
11:48Not even when your body is in the room.
11:51She's right.
11:52And the worst part is, you know it.
11:54You apologize.
11:55And in that moment, you mean it.
11:57You change for a few good weeks.
11:59Then a company reorganization hits like a storm.
12:02You disappear back into the work.
12:04Just like always.
12:05You tell yourself it's all for the family.
12:08Deep down, you know it's also, quietly, for you.
12:12You're chasing something now you can't quite name.
12:15You can't put your finger on what it is.
12:17You just know it lives at the top of the ladder.
12:20You're closer to it than you've ever been.
12:22So you keep climbing.
12:24Level 6.
12:25The Vice President
12:28Five years pass again.
12:29You're 45 years old.
12:31Your son is 14 and barely talks to you.
12:33Your daughter is 12 and growing up fast.
12:36They're becoming people you don't fully recognize.
12:39You missed some of the years that made them.
12:41You can't ever get those years back.
12:44They give you the title VP that spring.
12:47Vice President.
12:48You run a full division now.
12:50Several departments stack together underneath you.
12:53Hundreds of people answer to your name somehow.
12:56You command a budget in the tens of millions.
12:59You report to the executive team upstairs.
13:01You're in the room where the future gets decided.
13:05You realize something once you sit in that room.
13:07The higher you climb, the less it's about being right.
13:11It's about deciding with incomplete information.
13:14It's about owning the consequences either way.
13:17You rarely have all of the facts in front of you.
13:20You never have enough time to be sure.
13:22You decide anyway, because someone has to.
13:26That's the entire job at this height.
13:28Deciding clearly with the lights turned half off.
13:32You learn the art of managing up.
13:34The executives above you carry their own fears.
13:37They have their own bosses breathing down their necks.
13:40The board.
13:41The shareholders who only watch the numbers.
13:44You translate your division's reality into language they trust.
13:48You package the bad news with enormous care.
13:51You learn that how you say a thing matters.
13:54It matters as much as what you actually say.
13:57You also learn the hard skill of taking the blame.
14:00When your division fails, you don't point down.
14:03You don't name the manager who actually slipped.
14:06You absorb the entire hit yourself in public.
14:10You stand in front of the whole executive team.
14:12You tell them plainly that it was your call.
14:14It wasn't, not exactly, and they may know it.
14:18But you say it that way anyway.
14:20Because that's what the people below you need to see.
14:23A leader who will stand and shield them from above.
14:26You quietly become that leader for them.
14:28It costs you something real every single time.
14:31Every hit you take for them is a real hit.
14:34But your division would walk through fire for you now.
14:37And that loyalty is worth more than any bonus.
14:41You start to understand the lonely shape of leadership.
14:44The protection only ever flows in one direction.
14:47Downward.
14:48Nobody above you is absorbing your hits.
14:51You carry your own, in silence.
14:53You go home at night and you don't talk about it.
14:56Sarah stopped asking about your day a while ago.
14:58And you quietly let her stop.
15:01Level 7.
15:02The Senior Vice President.
15:04Five more years go by fast.
15:06You're 50 now.
15:07Your son is 19 and away at college.
15:10Your daughter is 17 and applying to schools.
15:12The house is quiet on most evenings now.
15:15Sarah is still there, in the same house.
15:17But the distance between you two never fully closed.
15:20You're polite and careful with each other.
15:23You're partners now, more than anything else.
15:25You're not what you were at that wedding in June.
15:27That was 24 long years ago now.
15:30They promote you to Senior Vice President.
15:32You're a real executive now, in title and in fact.
15:35You have a seat at the table that matters.
15:37You oversee multiple divisions all at once.
15:40Thousands of people work somewhere beneath you.
15:43You've stopped being able to picture their faces.
15:45They've become numbers in a headcount report to you.
15:48That fact bothers you, but only sometimes.
15:51Your job is now almost entirely other executives.
15:54You spend your days in endless alignment meetings.
15:57You spend them in board prep and rehearsal.
15:59You spend them quietly maneuvering behind the scenes.
16:02You're managing peers now, not obedient subordinates.
16:05Peers turn out to be harder than subordinates.
16:07You can't simply give them an order and walk away.
16:10You have to persuade, trade, and align them to you.
16:14You build careful coalitions.
16:15You make deals across the conference table.
16:18You support someone else's pet initiative this quarter.
16:20They support yours when the next quarter comes.
16:23You learn the executive version of human motivation.
16:26Money, status, fear, and legacy.
16:29Everyone at this level is chasing one of those four.
16:32Your job is to figure out which one is theirs.
16:34Then you use it, gently, to move them.
16:37You catch yourself doing it now without thinking.
16:40You wonder when exactly you became this calculating.
16:43You think of the kid in the stiff shoes.
16:45He wouldn't recognize the man you are now.
16:47You're not sure if that's growth or quiet loss.
16:50You drive home alone late one night.
16:53You realize something that stops you cold at a light.
16:55You can't remember the last time you did the real work.
16:58The actual work the company exists to do.
17:01You've managed the managers of managers for years.
17:03The real thing has become a distant rumor to you.
17:06You are, by every measure, a leader.
17:09But you've half forgotten what it is you even lead.
17:11Your daughter gets into her first choice school.
17:14She tells Sarah the good news before she tells you.
17:17You hear about your own daughter's triumph secondhand.
17:20It stings far more than you let yourself admit.
17:22You send her a long, careful text that night.
17:25She replies with a single word.
17:27You climb anyway, because climbing is all you know.
17:30Level 8.
17:31The Chief Operating Officer
17:33Four years pass.
17:35Quieter than before.
17:36You're 54 years old now.
17:38Your son graduated and moved to another city.
17:40Your daughter is away at college now, too.
17:43The house is fully, echoingly empty.
17:46You and Sarah rattle around inside it alone.
17:49They make you Chief Operating Officer that year.
17:52The C-suite at last, after all this time.
17:54Only a handful of people sit above the executives.
17:58You are one of them now.
17:59You report straight to the CEO.
18:02And through the CEO, you answer to the board.
18:04You're responsible for how the entire company runs.
18:07Operations.
18:09Execution.
18:10Turning one person's vision into reality at once.
18:12The pressure changes shape at this height.
18:15It's no longer about a single project anymore.
18:17It's no longer about one division's good quarter.
18:20It's about the survival of the entire company.
18:23Tens of thousands of livelihoods ride on you.
18:25People with mortgages and young kids at home.
18:28People with sick parents and second jobs.
18:30People exactly like that man you once had to warn.
18:33The one years ago who wasn't meeting expectations.
18:36Now you make calls like that by the thousands.
18:39You approve a painful restructuring one afternoon.
18:41It quietly eliminates 800 jobs across the company.
18:45You do it inside a spreadsheet on a screen.
18:47You do it in a cool, quiet conference room.
18:50You never see a single one of their faces.
18:52You tell yourself it saves the other 12,000 jobs.
18:55And maybe, in the cold math of it, it does.
18:59You sign off on it and you drive home.
19:01You can't fall asleep at all that night.
19:03You've reached a place that quietly frightens you.
19:06Your smallest decisions now reshape strangers' lives.
19:09You wield power you can barely feel the edges of.
19:12You learn the last hard lesson of the top.
19:14Real leadership up here is mostly just loneliness.
19:17You can't be true friends with the people below.
19:19You can't show any weakness to the people above.
19:22You carry all of it completely alone.
19:24You think about the small team you led at 26.
19:27Just three people.
19:29You knew all of their names back then.
19:31You knew their kids and their little problems.
19:33You'd quietly trade some of this to feel that again.
19:36But there's no path leading backward from here.
19:38There's only up or there's out.
19:40Sarah suggests a vacation.
19:43Just the two of you.
19:44You book it that same evening.
19:45You cancel it three days before you leave.
19:48A board meeting got moved up without warning.
19:50She doesn't fight you on it anymore.
19:52She just nods and unpacks the suitcase.
19:55Level 9.
19:56The Chief Executive Officer.
19:58Four years go by.
20:00You're 58 years old.
20:02The board chose you for it in the end.
20:04The old CEO retired last spring.
20:06They looked around the room and they picked you.
20:08You stand at the very top of the company now.
20:1230,000 people beneath your signature.
20:15Billions of dollars in revenue under your name.
20:17Your name printed on the letter to shareholders.
20:20Your face on the cover of the trade magazine.
20:23You made it.
20:24After 36 years of climbing.
20:26And it's the loneliest job you have ever held.
20:29Everyone wants something from you now.
20:31Everyone performs the moment you walk into a room.
20:34You can never be sure who's telling you the truth.
20:37You can't separate honest words from job security.
20:40You remember being that person yourself once.
20:43Years ago.
20:44Telling your boss what he wanted to hear.
20:46Now you sit on the other side of that exact game.
20:49And you can't tell who is doing it to you.
20:51You answer to the board sitting above you.
20:53They can fire you the moment they decide to.
20:56And they will.
20:57The instant the numbers turn down.
20:59Your only job is to keep those numbers turning up.
21:02Quarter after quarter after quarter.
21:05The market doesn't care about your grand vision.
21:07It cares about growth and nothing else.
21:10You make decisions that move entire towns around.
21:13You open a plant somewhere and a community blooms.
21:16You close one somewhere and a community quietly dies.
21:20You read about it in the news the next day.
21:22They write about you like you're a force of nature.
21:25You're really just a tired man who made a call.
21:27You barely see Sarah at all anymore.
21:29Your kids call you on most Sundays usually.
21:32Your son has a child of his own now.
21:34Your granddaughter.
21:35With a name you sometimes blank on.
21:37You've held her exactly twice in her whole life.
21:40You have absolutely everything you ever wanted.
21:43Power.
21:43Money.
21:44Status.
21:45The corner office.
21:46The view from your window stretches across the city.
21:49You stand at that window on some late nights.
21:52You look out at all those countless little lights.
21:54You wonder why all of it feels so completely hollow.
21:57You don't have an answer ready for that question.
21:59So you go back to your desk and your screen.
22:02There is always more work waiting on it.
22:04The phone rings at midnight with another crisis.
22:07You handle it exactly the way you always have.
22:10Calmly.
22:11Alone.
22:11You realize finally that the climb never actually ends.
22:15There's always just one more rung above this one.
22:18And you can already see it from where you stand.
22:20You reach for it without even deciding to.
22:24Level 10.
22:25The Chairman.
22:26You step down as Chief Executive at 65.
22:29They don't push you out the door.
22:31You leave on your own terms.
22:32Rare at the top.
22:34And you know how rare.
22:36The Board asks you to stay on as the Chairman.
22:38It's an honor.
22:39And you accept it as one.
22:41It's also a gilded leash.
22:42Tying you to the only world you've ever known.
22:45You sit at the head of the table now.
22:47But no longer drive the company.
22:49You advise.
22:50You guide.
22:51You watch a younger you make the same calls you once made alone in the dark.
22:55Sometimes she's right.
22:57And you say nothing at all.
22:59Sometimes she's wrong.
23:00And you say nothing.
23:02Because leadership means knowing when your turn is over.
23:05That last lesson turns out to be the hardest one of them all.
23:08You spent 43 years learning to control every room you walked into.
23:12Now your final job is to let that control go gracefully.
23:16You've become a steward of something far larger than yourself.
23:19The company will outlive you by a century if run well.
23:22And you care deeply that it is.
23:24You think about that far more than you ever expected to.
23:28The thing you built will keep running long after you've stopped.
23:31New people will fill every chair you ever sat in.
23:34Most won't know your name.
23:35And the few who do will say it without much weight.
23:38Your portrait might hang in a quiet hallway nobody walks down slowly.
23:42You climb to the very top of every chart you ever saw.
23:46From up here, at last, you can finally see the whole shape of the thing.
23:50The arrows still point up, toward a seat that turns out to be another kind of cage.
23:55You have more money than you'll ever spend.
23:57You have a body that aches from four decades behind a desk.
24:01You have a marriage that survived more on habit than passion.
24:04Sarah is quietly your friend again.
24:06And you're grateful in a way you can't say out loud.
24:09Your grandchildren visit you on the holidays.
24:12They don't really understand what you did for all those years.
24:14And you find that you can't fully explain it to them either.
24:17You led.
24:19That was the whole of it.
24:20You spent an entire lifetime carrying weight that belonged to other people.
24:24You climbed every single rung that there ever was to climb.
24:27You reached the very top to find the same loneliness that lives at the bottom.
24:31Just a better view.
24:33Your son visits one afternoon with your granddaughter.
24:36She asks what your job actually was.
24:38And you try to answer honestly.
24:40You tell her you helped many people work together toward something.
24:43She nods and runs off to play.
24:46Satisfied with an answer that took 43 years to earn.
24:49You watch her go.
24:50You think about the kid in stiff shoes who started this long climb.
24:54You wonder what you'd tell him now if you could.
24:57You're not sure he would even listen to you.
24:59You certainly wouldn't have.
25:01Somewhere right now, a 22-year-old sits at a brand new desk in stiff shoes.
25:06There's a yellow sticky note with a login and a name above his.
25:09He thinks hard work alone will carry him all the way to the top.
25:13He has no idea what the long climb will cost him along the way.
25:16He has no idea who he'll become to reach the chair you leave empty.
25:20He dreams of the power, the title, the corner office view.
25:24He doesn't dream about the missed bedtimes or the half-present marriage.
25:28He'll learn all of it eventually, one rung at a time.
25:32They always do.
25:33The cycle continues.
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