Neil sat opposite me in my office. The hollowed-out stare and chewed-to-the-quick fingernails told me this was a man who probably hadn't slept or eaten much in days. As the 29-year-old CEO of a highly successful tech firm, he was at his wits end. The company he helped to create was undergoing explosive growth that had caught him by surprise, requiring a new infusion of venture capital, dozens of new hires and a major company restructuring. He missed the good old days, he told me, when it was just him and his partner working from his Brooklyn apartment. "I don't get it," he confessed. "This is what I always wanted. I just wish I knew what the hell I was doing!"

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When I was 6, I won my elementary school science fair by attempting to grow bean sprouts out of an empty milk carton. Hardly groundbreaking stuff, but it sure was fun. Interestingly, my experiment was not a success. Sadly, nothing sprouted. I suspect now that I was awarded first prize because the judges could see my crushing disappointment, and noticed from my copious notes that I had tried really hard to do it all by myself (unlike some of the other fancier projects that had parents' fingerprints all over them).

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This past month, I traveled to Florida to deliver a presentation to a group of health and wellness experts, and I thought I did a bang-up job. My preparation went beyond the norm for this type of event, including a full week spent slaving over the PowerPoint, even going so far as to hire a presentation coach for two sessions to help me iron out some of the kinks (yes, even coaches need a coach!). So when the feedback arrived that my presentation fell somewhat below expectations, I was upset. My message had failed to land. Or as one reviewer delicately put it, "You didn't quite connect with everyone in the audience."

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I never saw my father cry. Not at my brother’s wedding, our cousin’s funeral or my college graduation. It may have been his buttoned up Teutonic heritage, or former training in the army, but one thing is certain, Dad wasn’t very open with his emotions. Whenever I’d ask him about his feelings, his facial muscles would twitch and he’d fob me off with a “better go ask your mother.”

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If you own a computer or read the news, you’ve probably heard of the “two Steves” – Jobs and Wozniak, who founded Apple Computers in 1976. Far less likely is that you’ve heard of Ron Wayne. He designed the Apple logo and along with Steve Jobs and Wozniak, was one of the original founding partners in Apple. Afraid that their new startup computer company would fail, Ron sold back his 10% stake in Apple for $800, only 12 days after he got it. If he’d held onto that $800 stake, even as a silent partner, today he’d be worth around $22 billion.

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