Sharelle Klaus is one of a kind.  She’s a fighter, there is no doubt about that.  For the last decade and a half, Sharelle has been building a company called DRY Soda Co., a non-alcoholic beverage that is enjoyed by millions around the world.  But what she has really been building is a reflection of herself.

It’s so common when we launch out on our own to lead a company that we feel this pressure to know everything.  We can’t let people see our weaknesses, lest we get bulldozed.  So we create this armor around us based on this story of what we “should be doing”.  And over time, that armor gets pretty thick and for many leaders, it becomes a prison.  Sharelle found the key and unlocked it.

When I started DRY Soda I thought I could do no wrong for the first five to six years. I was so committed to being right, but inside of me was this insecurity that I didn’t go to a great undergraduate school and people would think that I wasn’t capable of leading this company. I didn’t have an MBA. CEOs don’t make mistakes. A real CEO would know what to do. I would say these things in my head. And then I had this epiphany, about seven to eight years into running the company, where I was at a board meeting and there was a woman on my board and she was tough, someone that kind of scared me. I had tried a marketing campaign that didn’t work, and she said, “OK, well, that didn’t work, so what’s the next thing to try? What did you learn from it?”

And it dawned on me in that moment that I was running my company in a fear-based way because of the stories I was telling myself about where a CEO should come from and what they should know how to do. I was so scared to make mistakes because of what I thought other people would think that I was wound up all the time, and that stressed out everyone around me.

When I interviewed Sharelle to share how she has worked to take control to design the life she wants to lead, I knew her story would be best represented in the chapter on “Grounding Stories with Facts.”  We all tell ourselves these crazy stories until we realize that they are just stories.  Today, Sharelle has let go of many of those stories, has opened herself up to a world of curiosity and possibility.  She brought in a new president to run day to day operations and she is guiding the Company from a place of strength, not fear.  

You can learn more about Sharelle and why grounding stories with facts is such a fundamental foundation for leadership by ordering One Life to Lead today.

Russell Benaroya is an entrepreneur, coach, speaker and author of One Life to Lead and Free Yourself to Work on Your Business.  To learn more, visit www.russellbenaroya.com.