Most of us are ready long before we feel ready. I know that because I spent years proving it to myself the hard way.
Welcome to the first post on this blog. This is where I'll share the stories, lessons, and occasional confessions that didn't fit in the book, or that I'm still working out. Some will come from the cockpit. Some will come from the office, the classroom, or the kitchen table. All of them will circle back to one question: what is keeping you on the ground?
Kicking the tires is not the problem
The title of my book, Kick the Tires, Light the Fires, comes from an old aviation saying. Kicking the tires is the preflight. Before you ever start an engine, you walk around the aircraft, check the fluids, look over the controls, and make sure the machine is ready before you trust it with your life and the lives of your crew. No good pilot skips that step.
Lighting the fires is what comes next. You start the engines, taxi out, and go do the thing pilots actually signed up to do, which is fly.
Here's what I've learned over a long career in and out of the cockpit: preparation is almost never the problem. Most of the people I've led, mentored, or worked alongside were plenty prepared. The problem is that the preflight never ended. They kept walking around the aircraft, kicking the same tires, checking the same fluids, and calling it progress.
The line painted on the taxiway
Every airport has a set of yellow lines painted across the taxiway just before it meets the runway. It's called the hold-short line. When you reach it, you stop. You do not cross until the tower clears you onto the runway.
I still remember sitting at that line as a student pilot, engine running, checklist done, waiting. Everything behind that line is preparation. Everything in front of it is action. It's just paint, but it marks the exact spot where getting ready turns into going.
In aviation, someone in the tower tells you when it's time to cross. In life, nobody does. There's no controller watching your career, your health, your marriage, or your big idea, keying the mic to say you're cleared for takeoff. Most of the time, you have to clear yourself. And that's exactly where a lot of us get stuck.
My own hold-short line
I'll tell on myself, because it would be dishonest not to.
I first published this book in 2013. Over the years since, I kept coming back to it, convinced it could be better. I would pull it out, rework a chapter, then set it aside when life got busy. Then I'd come back and do it again. There was always one more draft, one more story to add, one more paragraph that wasn't quite right.
I was writing a book about not kicking the tires forever, and I was kicking the tires on the book.
The truth is that the manuscript was ready long before I was. What I was really avoiding was the moment someone else would read it. As long as it was still "in progress," nobody could judge it, and I couldn't fail at it. Revision felt like responsibility. In reality, it had become a very comfortable place to hide.
What finally got me across the line wasn't a burst of confidence. It was a decision to let people read it. Once I did that, the next steps followed, and the new edition is out now. I still didn't feel completely ready. I just stopped waiting to.
When preparation becomes avoidance
Preparation turns into avoidance quietly. It rarely announces itself. Here are a few of the warning lights I've learned to watch for in my own life and in the people I lead:
• You keep researching a decision you already know the answer to.
• You're waiting to feel confident before you act, instead of acting to become confident.
• You're busy every day but can't point to any real movement toward what matters most.
• You can name the "one more thing" you need before you start, and it keeps changing.
If any of those sound familiar, you're not lazy and you're not broken. You're human. Fear is very good at dressing itself up as diligence.
Your next step
You don't have to make a dramatic leap today. You just have to cross one line. Before you close this page, take a minute with three questions:
1. What have you been preflighting the longest?
2. What would "good enough to launch" honestly look like?
3. What is one intentional step you can take in the next 48 hours?
Write the answer to the third question down, then do it. Not when it's perfect. Not when you feel ready. Within 48 hours.
You've already done the walk-around. You know more than enough to take the next step.
Kick the tires. Light the fires.
