Advice to the Next Generation of Founders: the Graduating Class of 2020
Recently I was asked what three pieces of advice I would give the graduating class of my old business school. My first inclination was to say, “screw all the cliche advice about coming together in this time of crisis, there is more to this moment!”
I’m a proud member of the Xennial micro-generation. Born in 1983, I’m at the cusp of the Millennial kick-off and qualify as a Millennial myself. The tragedy of September 11th was the first week of my freshmen year at college, I graduated from my MBA program in 2008 at the climax of the Great Recession, I stand in a once-in-a-century pandemic that’s shaking the very way society works and how the companies I own run, and now the threat of military police shadows my city as the light shines brighter on racial inequity across the country.
As I sat in my home office on the phone, thankful to have a break from Zoom meetings, I smiled and nodded my head as I prepared to answer my alma mater’s question. As a mindset coach specialized in working with early-stage founders and entrepreneurs, I firmly and resolutely said, “I’d tell those graduates that this is the best time to graduate and be whoever the hell you want to be in this world.”
So here you go, graduates. Here are three pieces of advice, honestly and directly, that I have to offer you.
1. Embrace That The Old Way Of Doing Things Is Gone.
We can only be solemn for so long about the way we used to do things. Yes, the world has changed. No, we don’t know what our new normal is going to be like on the other side of this. And yes, that’s completely okay. Screw the old way that things were done. I’m over being nostalgic.
Sometimes we get so attached to a dream of what our life is going to look like that it’s hard to imagine all the other ways our lives could turn out. I challenge you to think outside the box. The old way of doing things was a “box.” You’re capable of far more than what that box could contain. Now that that old way of doing things has been more-or-less demolished, you’ve been given a gift. You’ve been given a gift of a completely clean slate and the ability to create whatever world you can imagine as its replacement.
When I was in sixth grade, I remember learning about the solar system for the first time. My teacher put up a picture of Saturn and then boggled my mind with a fact that still inspires me to this day. She put up a picture of Saturn, gigantic with its rings glistening in mystery, and told us that Saturn would float if it was put into a giant ocean. She then paused and let us soak in that fact, almost expecting us to be skeptical. My mind was engaged in imagining the hypothetical scene with complete wonderment. That was her segway to starting a lesson plan about the fundamentals of physical science and our universe. She had our attention because of what was possible and now she could teach us nature’s tools that made it possible.
Looking back, it was a brilliant way to teach. She grabbed my attention with something that seemed unreal and beyond my dreams, then began teaching me about things that otherwise might have seemed boring. Instead, I had a glimpse of how amazing the world was and then could appreciate the fundamentals that allowed it to flourish. If she had started by talking about rules of physical sciences, gravity, or even asked us to memorize facts, I probably wouldn’t have paid attention. The current pandemic and protests are creating a similar situation for you as a graduating class.
The world you’re entering can be anything you want it to be. It is yours to create and redefine.
All the fundamental tools have been given to you and now you can create the wildest universe of your dreams. There are no boundaries to predispose you to what that universe should look like. As the entrepreneurs and founders of tomorrow, you can envision whatever universe your mind can create and then go make it happen. That’s a real gift. Yes, it will be difficult, but why should that discourage or stop you? Sometimes extreme circumstances prompt us to start over and see things in new ways. Whatever you want your life to look like, it’s yours to make. If you want to start a company or become a founder, nothing is holding your vision back.
Many people from all stages of life are surrounded by uncertainty right now. Think of it as an opportunity to go all-in on what you’re truly passionate about. Pave your way. Everyone is a visionary. Everyone has a unique purpose, a unique way of looking at things in the world. Right now you are unbound. You are untainted because the old way of doing things no longer exists and you have free reign to create the future and life that you want for yourself. That’s a goddamn gift. You can change the world by starting with how you choose to live your life, every day.
2. Don’t Measure Yourself By Someone Else’s Ruler
My second piece of advice is to not measure yourself by someone else’s ruler. Albert Einstein once said that “Everybody is a genius, but if you judge a fish by its ability to climb up a tree, it will spend its whole life believing that it’s stupid.” Too many people waste their lives being a fish trying to climb up a tree and judging themselves for it. Don’t measure yourself by someone else’s ruler. Most of your lives, you have been taught that there was a definition of what success looks like and for what fulfillment looks like. Whether you realize it or not, you have been implanted with an idea of what you were trying to achieve. You have been conditioned with other people’s expectations of what you were worth, what you were capable of, and what your life was worth. I challenge you to redefine that. I challenge you to take a moment of reflection to find your purpose, to find what fulfills you and makes you happy. Then, do it. Success and fulfillment mean something different to absolutely everyone. The biggest lie of your life up until this point was that it was the same goal for everyone. You are not all climbing towards the same peak of the same mountain.
Just because something is achievable doesn’t mean it’s something you should do. There are different ways to achieve and we individually have the power to define what “achievement” will mean for us. When you measure yourself by someone else’s ruler, you set yourself up to be resentful years from now. I guarantee you that. If you take this moment and realize that you have an opportunity to decide what you want to measure your life against and what matters to you, then you’ve been given a gift that many people haven’t dared to acknowledge.
Decide what happiness will mean to you when you envision yourself one year from now, 10 years, even 25 years from now. I challenge you to define what the feeling of success is. How does it make you feel to live the life that you want in that future state? Then, reverse engineer it and make it happen. If you start off as a new graduate in this crisis by measuring yourself against standards that you don’t even want to begin with, you will have squandered the greatest gift of being a graduate during this chaotic time. Don’t be a fish trying to climb up a tree and spend your life judging yourself for it. Success is anything you want it to be and that will never change.
3. Take Messy Action
My third piece of advice is to be willing to take messy action with all the plans that you have laid for yourself. The current chaos and tragedies have certainly reminded us that plans can sometimes be thrown out the window, and that’s okay. You can create a roadmap of what you want your life to look like. You can create a roadmap of exactly how you would launch your new business, how you want to join your ideal company and work your way from the ground up, etc., but plans are often imperfect. That imperfection is the most fun part. If everything went according to plan, life would be really boring. Let’s be honest- who wants to live a boring life?
Be willing to navigate in the gray and navigate uncertainty. Be willing to take imperfect action and create massive change in your life at any given moment. Action does not need to be perfect. Sometimes we wait for the perfect moment to do something or say something. You can wait for the perfect moment to go to the gym. You can wait for the perfect moment to decide to become a lawyer. You can, like me, wait for the perfect moment to decide that you don’t want to be a lawyer anymore. We can always wait for the perfect moment, but when we wait for the perfect moment we’re only giving ourselves an excuse to not take action. We are giving ourselves a license to chicken-out because we’re either scared or lacking confidence.
Be willing to take imperfect action and be messy with life because that’s where you’re going to find yourself. That’s where you’re going to learn who you are and that’s where you’re going to learn what you’re truly capable of. Perfection is often about taking calculated action so everything goes according to plan, but life is not perfect. It’s okay to strive for great things and you should all be striving to live a life of greatness, whatever that means to you. But don’t let perfection be the enemy of the good and don’t let good mean settling for a life of mediocrity. A life of mediocrity is not what any of you are truly capable of. When you commit to taking action and moving the needle in your life, there is no such thing as ordinary because life will overflow with extraordinary fulfillment.
The chaos and tragedies of our society right now have changed the way we look at the world, our identities, and the way business works. As an entrepreneur and founder myself, I have enjoyed taking messy action and creating. I’ve enjoyed creating a world that, once upon a time, I could only imagine in my mind. You’ve been given a set of tools and you can do whatever you want with those tools, but you have to be willing to think outside the box because our society and economy are now working outside of the box. We are in tense and uncharted waters. New rules are being made. I challenge you to create new rules for yourself. Don’t follow the rules of others. Getting through this uncertainty is the short-game. After you get through this, you can accomplish anything. Create the life you want to live. Take some messy action and go live an extraordinary life.
