Say yes to surf camp and side-hustles
It may sound like a bad Eat Pray Love remake, but having a goal buddy to tackle your bucket-list items will accelerate and evolve your career goals
Learning to surf is one of those things that sounds sexier then actually doing it. As a land locked Canadian with Blue Crush surf ambitions, I was the girl who proudly wore my Roxy board shorts over my snow pants and toted a cardboard surfboard around on a snowy Halloween. Years later I came to terms that a destination surf camp would be the only way to cross off my childhood surf dreams from my bucket list.
For years I talked about going to a surf camp. I did the research for it, found possible weeks to take off, but it was one of those things that stayed on my mental list of things to get to one day… when I was a little less busy.
I treated most of my bucket-list goals this way, most particularly the goal I had of building a side-hustle. After I sold my business in 2013, I kept adding new ideas to a long list, but always came up with an excuse for why it wasn’t the right time, or the right idea to validate.
Coincidentally, I ended up tackling both bucket list items at the same time in 2019. When I look back on it, surf camp did something special for me, it gave me momentum to tackle other goals that had been sitting in my head.
So what changed in 2019? Why did I finally pursue surf camp? Enter Robyn Fukumoto, my then colleague at BCG Digital Ventures and now co-founder at Lani & Kai. We both had a passion for start-ups and big ideas and desperately wanted something outside of our day-to-day grind to care about.
What started as small after work chats with Robyn, soon evolved into being each other’s goal buddies. It started simply by pushing each other to do things we wouldn’t have done alone — like workout classes, half marathons and scheduling time every week to brainstorm new business ideas. This support system helped us work up to bigger goals — like traveling to Morocco for a 7 day surf camp (big thanks to Surf Maroc).
By the end of 7 days in Morocco we were catching waves and planning how we could continue to make this new hobby a part of our lives. With our brains focused on waves instead of work, it allowed us to start thinking about the other goals we wanted to take the reins on. Realizing surfing was possible with planning, focus and dedication — starting a side-hustle felt possible too.
While recovering in-between surf sessions, we had time to think through what our. side-hustle could be and how we could start. By putting guardrails on our many ideas we were able to narrow in on a feasible business to run with a full-time job, and then just like booking surf camp, we broke up launching our business into small tasks — like vetting manufacturers, testing formulas, finding packaging, creating fulfillment processes, setting prices, and launching a website.
Less than a year later Lani & Kai was launched to the world. Pulling the trigger on surf camp gave us the mental push we needed to get moving on a thing that we would have otherwise just said maybe one day to.
