The Turning-Pro Moment: When Your Purpose Stops Being Negotiable
Here we tackle the fear behind most avoidance: “If I really take responsibility, it will break me.” We’ll separate workload from inner posture, show how stoic tools protect your emotional core, and define concrete boundaries so you can be fully in charge without constantly running on fumes.
The day you really turn pro is quiet on the outside.
No promotion. No confetti. Nobody posts on LinkedIn for you.
But inside, something fundamental snaps into place.
You stop negotiating with yourself.
You stop asking, “Am I more of a developer now, or a leader already?” You stop telling yourself the story that you’re “just helping out a bit with leadership, but deep down you’re still the techie”.
From that day on, your purpose is no longer up for discussion. You wake up, and there is only one direction: forward.
That’s the Turning-Pro1 Moment.
Motivation is cheap. Purpose is expensive.
Purpose is expensive because it demands a price: you have to change who you are in practice, not only in your head.
We throw the word “motivation” around all the time.
But biologically, motivation is just a Dopamine kick; a temporary rush in your nervous system. It feels great when it’s there, and it disappears as soon as the task becomes uncomfortable, boring, or scary.
Purpose is something else.
Purpose is the answer to “Why am I here, and what am I supposed to do with this life?”
Purpose is expensive because it demands a price: you have to change who you are in practice, not only in your head.
As long as you’re still negotiating (“Maybe I lead a bit… but I still want to be the best engineer in the room… but I also want everyone to like me… but I don’t want to be the bad guy with expectations…”), you haven’t turned pro yet. You’re playing both sides against your own soul.
Turning pro is the moment when this stops.
Plateaus, habitus, and the inner war before the breakthrough
In the mentoring session, I described how your inner development happens in plateaus.
You practice, you practise, you practise. You build discipline in the original sense: being a disciple, a student of something every day. Stoic style.
From the outside, not much changes:
You still have the same job title,
the same calendar,
the same Slack messages.
Inside, something else is happening: you’re slowly building a habitus – the pattern of how you think, react, and decide by default.
That habitus becomes your baseline. When things go wrong, you fall back to that level, not lower.
Inner Resistance is strongest towards the finish line
And here is the uncomfortable truth:
On the way to the next plateau, it gets hardest right before the breakthrough.
3/4 of the way there, your resistance is at its maximum.
90% in, you want to quit, or at least go back to what you know: coding, firefighting, ticket-shuffling, being “a colleague with extra responsibility” instead of a real leader.
That’s the inner war before the Turning-Pro Moment.
You’re trying to control your subconscious with your conscious mind. Your rational side says, “I am CTO, I should lead.” Your subconscious replies, “Leave me alone. Let’s just keep doing what feels safe and comfortable.”
Turning pro is the moment when these two sides really work together for the first time.
What the Turning-Pro Moment actually feels like
In the session, I described it as follows:
The Turning-Pro Moment is the moment when you first truly understand who you are, why you are, and what your life means.
It’s the first time your conscious and your unconscious are united. Many people report crying when that moment hits them. Not because they are sad, but because something inside finally stops fighting.
Up until then, you keep your purpose at arm’s length:
you like leading, but you still hide behind operative tasks
you enjoy mentoring, but you still measure your value in story points
you know your company needs a culture-shaping CTO, but you still act as if your job is “helping the team with tickets”
When the Turning-Pro Moment hits, something changes in a sentence you say to yourself:
From:
“I am a developer who also has some leadership responsibility.”
To:
“I am a Leader. My craft is building people, culture, and systems. I write software through others now.”
Question: Which of these two are you right now?
And from that day on, your purpose stops being negotiable. You still have bad days. You still doubt yourself. You still make mistakes. But you no longer question whether you’re on the right path. You only ask, “How do I become better at this?”
From “colleague with responsibility” to leadership as a calling
In the mentoring, I said very clearly:
Right now, many new CTOs are not proper leaders yet. They are colleagues with extra responsibility.
They are:
liked by the team,
technically strong,
always available to help,
…but they don’t set the baseline for the whole organisation.
A real leader is something else. Leadership is not a role; it’s a calling.
I break it down into four pillars:
Credibility – people believe you will deliver what you say. They trust your word, even when things go wrong.
Role Model – you live the behaviour you expect from others. You embody ownership, calm, clarity, and self-leadership.
Vision & Mission – you can tell a story of where you’re all going; a Hero’s Journey where your people are the protagonists, not the victims.
Challenge (in both directions) – you challenge others and invite them to challenge you. The power distance index is as low as possible; people can tell you the uncomfortable truths.
The Turning-Pro Moment in leadership is when you stop treating these four as “nice ideas” and start treating them as non-negotiable habits.
You wake up, and your first responsibility is no longer your own code, but:
Your credibility,
Your example as a Role Model,
The clarity of your Vision,
and your openness to Challenge.
That’s the day you stop asking, “How can I personally get as much done as possible today?”
and start asking, “How can I make everyone else better than me today?”
Are You Worth Following? Using the 4 Pillars to Audit Your Leadership
You can think of this whole piece as one sticky note above your desk:
Your Purpose as CTO: not features, but transformation
In the mentoring, we talked very concretely about your role:
Your purpose as a CTO is to create a scalable environment, not just squeeze out a few features.
That’s a brutal shift.
It means:
Your success is no longer measured in merged PRs,
not in “I fixed the dashboard when it was down”,
not in being the smartest problem solver in the room.
Your success is measured in:
teams that work without you as a dependency,
team leads who carry real ownership,
a culture in which people understand the mission and move towards it without you having to push them every single day.
Turning pro as a CTO means accepting:
“I am no longer the senior firefighter developer.”
“I am the culture person. I shape how this company thinks, works, and learns.”
This is also where the Stoic idea of the three circles of control becomes practical:
What you directly control (your behaviour, your decisions, your communication),
What you influence (your Team Leads, your processes, your rituals),
What you don’t control at all (market, investors, who quit, who gets sick).
Your job is to build purpose in circles 1 and 2 – and ruthlessly keep circle 3 away from your people if they cannot act on it.
That’s leadership as a vocation, not as a title.
How to walk toward your Turning-Pro Moment
You can’t force the Turning-Pro Moment. But you can walk towards it every day.
From the mentoring, I’d distill a few concrete practices:
See yourself as a student, not the master
Discipline doesn’t mean forcing yourself; it means being a student.
Ask more questions. Assume you don’t know everything. Practise the Stoic way: practice, practice, practice.
Invest in your leadership layer first
Your Team Leads (sub-leads) are your NCOs.
If they don’t grow into leaders, you will stay a tactical dependency forever. Your Turning-Pro Moment as CTO includes the decision: “I work on my leaders first, then on everything else.”
Make yourself less necessary, on purpose
Notice where you are still the hero that saves the day.
Consciously design systems (monotasking, signals, pairing, trunk-based development, etc.) that work without you. Every time you remove yourself as a bottleneck, you move closer to your real purpose.
Tell the story, again and again
Vision is not a slide deck. It’s a story you tell until people can tell it without you. A journey where each person can see:
“If I go through this, there is a personal happy ending for me as well.”
Reflect brutally honestly
Journal, bragbook, self-reflection – all of that is there so you don’t start lying to yourself. Ask in writing:
Where am I still acting like “a colleague with responsibility”?
Where am I avoiding conflict to stay liked?
Where am I still negotiating my purpose?
When your purpose stops being negotiable
One day – maybe after a difficult quarter, a painful conversation, or a quiet walk in the forest with your team – it will click.
You’ll realise:
“I am this person now. I am the one who leads. I am the one who gives other people purpose. That is my job, every day, for the rest of my professional life.”
It will feel heavy and light at the same time.
Heavy, because there’s no backdoor anymore.
Light, because all the energy you spent on inner negotiation is suddenly free.
That is the Turning-Pro Moment:
When you stop asking whether you will follow your purpose today – and simply start walking.
Every day.
Not Monday to Friday.
Every day.
If you feel that you’re somewhere just before this plateau – half developer, half leader, torn on the inside – don’t panic. That tension is a sign you’re close, not that you’re failing.
Keep practising. Keep reflecting. Keep building Credibility, being a Role Model, telling the Vision, and inviting Challenge.
At some point, you’ll look back and realise:
Your purpose is no longer negotiable.
You’ve already turned pro.
—Adrian
Turning-Pro moment was described in Steven Pressfield’s Book Series of The War Of Art https://stevenpressfield.com/books/ ❤️