By Chao Yang, Discovery Module Fellow
I’m really behind on my discovery module homework right now. The last thing I should be doing is writing a blog post about my process, especially when so many of us in this cohort are facing similar challenges. But I truly believe someone out there, maybe even a fellow traveler in this fellowship journey, will find some resonance here.
At the beginning of this adventure, I was so sure I’d be building a publishing incubator for BIPOC storytellers. If you're wondering how my fellowship is going, picture this: I’m learning archery for the first time. Each time I refine my stance, form, and find that elusive anchor point, the target just…moves.
It turns out, my parenting journey is running parallel to this experience. So much of being an entrepreneur and a parent begins on the inside, doesn’t it?
After my ninth draft of the business canvas, which is a number that feels both ridiculous and deeply familiar-I was so moved by Sara Bareilles’ “Still Crying” that I just…lost it. Full-on, ugly crying.
I was contemplating whether to dive back into my competitive analysis for the 100th time, but mommy guilt won out. I’d missed every early childhood class with my daughter since starting this fellowship and a new job, and it was such an incredible blessing to finally be there.
In business, especially in the entrepreneurial life, it’s so easy to self-isolate, throwing yourself completely into your idea. But what if everything else suffers?
The class, ironically enough, focused on building confidence in our children. How fitting, because at this point in my fellowship, my own confidence is…well, let’s just say it's taken a vacation. This fellowship has been a whirlwind of big changes, exposing my weaknesses in the work, testing assumptions that literally drop my ego, and wrestling with AI in a way that feels both exhilarating and deeply uncomfortable.
To be honest, there were a couple of weeks when I seriously considered quitting. It felt like too much, that I’d never measure up, that I couldn't “know” because I had to be competent. And being in my toddler’s parenting class, witnessing her guide us through building our toddlers' confidence, reminded me that mine was currently shattered.
It’s hard to feel like you’re 40 and unraveling, isn't it?
But what I learned that day made the child in me perk up. As a Hmong American woman, I’d always possessed an abundance of confidence when it came to problem-solving. But facing these big changes and learning curves, I’d forgotten how I did it all before. It was a reminder to reach back into my arsenal of practice, the tried-and-true methods for navigating challenging, new, difficult, and uncomfortable learning experiences.
There were weeks when I lacked confidence so much that I held off on turning in assignments, procrastinating and delaying the inevitable. My best effort was to avoid the anxiety of doing what I was scared of doing.
Then it hit me: the same concept that applies to my toddler-facing fears, building resilience was applicable to me too. What I was feeling was taking root as anxiety, and the opposite of anxiety isn’t confidence; it's creativity. So I went back to my purpose statement, one of the first assignments from the beginning of this fellowship, to remind myself what inherently drives me to do this work. And I started over.
Because I’d already gone through the motions before, this time I approached the assignments with more confidence, asked questions freely, and created drafts that felt much more authentic. I began to think more like myself versus how I thought others would want me to think. And as I change my business concept-it is the practice of doing that is making me more confident.
The only way to build confidence, it seems, is to practice, be creative, and work through the anxiety until you’ve built enough mental and emotional muscle memory to do it again, and again.
It’s a messy process, this entrepreneurship thing. And sometimes, it feels like we're all just learning archery for the first time. But that’s okay. We’ll get there, one arrow at a time.
Chao Yang is a Cohort 8 (2026) Discovery Module Fellow.
Let’s see where Chao lands!