Sometimes the answer is to do…nothing
It’s been a while since I’ve given you an update on the new arm of our business, Student Made.
I’ll be honest: It’s gone nothing like I thought it would.
I thought that as soon as the date of our transition hit on May 9th, our team and I would hit the gas pedal. I thought it would feel like the early days of Student Maid: an uphill battle where, against all odds, we worked to build a new student leadership branch of our business.
What actually happened is something quite uncharacteristic of me, and of us.
We decided to do . . . nothing.
Well, not nothing. I guess what I mean is that instead of immediately launching a website and spending all our effort planning like we normally might, we decided to take a different approach. We decided to let things unfold and take it one step at a time.
Here’s what happened:
We started by sharing our vision for the world at our last Human Leadership Program in May. We told our attendees that one of the ways in which we want to build a more human world is by teaching the concepts of human leadership to rising leaders so that they can help us build a better future. We shared that we wanted to offer students the opportunity to join our next Human Leadership Program and that we didn’t want them to have to pay a single dollar to learn with us. We asked our attendees to let us know if they could help by sponsoring (or, as we call it, investing in) students. That announcement led to enough interest to offer 50+ students the opportunity to join our Human Leadership Program in August, which is happening next week.
After that came the next step: Recruiting those 50+ students. We reached out to schools and programs that we’ve worked with in the past and asked for their help in spreading the word. And now, we’ve got students from the University of Las Vegas, from the CEO program that teaches high-schoolers around the country how to be entrepreneurial in their thinking, from Lebanese American University, from the University of Florida Entrepreneurship Program, and from the Percussive Arts Society. Students with all different backgrounds, experiences, and majors will take this program and learn right alongside 250+ leaders from around the globe.
And that led to the next step: Several of our sponsors asked to be connected to the students they invested in. So that led to the idea of bringing everyone together after the Human Leadership Program concludes for a special session where we will give students the chance to share what they learned and meet those who invested in them. We believe a lot of mentor-mentee relationships will come out of this, and maybe even internships and jobs. We are so excited to watch it all unfold.
All of that led to the next idea, when a school approached us about doing an event for campuses across the country to teach the concepts of human leadership during Women Entrepreneurship Week. We were able to fund this event by matching the investments we’ve received, and that got our wheels spinning: We can do more of this. So now, we are thinking up similar programs with a high school district in Florida and with a college in Brooklyn.
On May 9th, not one of these steps was mapped out. Every single part of this has happened organically. One step led to the next. One idea led to the next. We didn’t overthink it, over-plan it, overcontrol it, or try to manipulate it. We embraced the idea of letting things evolve. We kept it simple.
I should tell you there was one point where we didn’t keep it simple. About a month ago, we (or should I say, I) felt pressure to create a website and share our vision for Student Made. I felt like enough time had passed and like the world was watching and waiting, wondering what we were going to do next and what Student Made would look like. So we actually started building a website. We spent a lot of time writing the copy. And then, we stopped. Why were we doing this? Why were we forcing ourselves to figure it all out right now? We knew that, inevitably, whatever we put on the website would change as this idea continued to take shape. What if no one was actually expecting a website right now? What if this was a self-imposed expectation? What would happen if we didn’t publish it and continued to let things unfold?
This approach to business—and to life—is counterintuitive. In my journey as a leader and entrepreneur, I’ve been conditioned to believe that business has to be hard. That success takes a lot of hard work. When I look back, building Student Maid always felt so hard. And sometimes “hard” is okay . . . but the problem was that I used it to measure whether I was on the right track. I thought that if something felt too easy, it probably meant I wasn’t doing it right. In fact, that’s a huge part of why it took me so long to transition the company. Our existing leadership development business felt too easy when compared to Student Maid, and so removing the “hard part” of the company and focusing 100% of our efforts on growing the “easy” business didn’t seem like the right choice. How could the right choice be so . . . effortless?
Speaking of . . . that’s the title of a book I’m currently reading: Effortless by Greg McKeown. It’s fantastic. Greg puts into words what has been so hard for me to express. He makes a point to say that sometimes we fail not because we don’t try hard enough, but because we try too hard. Because we overachieve and we overdo. Because doing nothing is so painfully hard and we can’t bear the thought of it, so sometimes we over-control and we over-manipulate, and that can sometimes change the outcome.
I haven’t written about Student Made much because I’ve felt like I haven’t had much to say, and that has made me feel ashamed. The fact that it blends organically with what we are already doing and has been a natural evolution doesn’t make me feel like a great entrepreneur sometimes. Aren’t I supposed to be the one modeling hard and scrappy work?
This transition has made me realize that I need to change my own definition of success and reimagine what it looks like. I’m not saying that there aren’t hard pieces of building a meaningful business and a meaningful life. There so are. A lot of hard pieces. And those pieces matter. What I am saying is that we shouldn’t be ashamed when we choose the simple path. We shouldn’t be ashamed when we make the choice to do nothing and let things unfold because success can look like that, too.
And actually, what if that’s the best part? What if the best part is actually watching how something evolves? What if that leads us to a better result? What would happen if we let that happen? What would happen if we gave our teams permission to take the one next step instead of figuring out the next ten? What would happen if we gave that same permission to ourselves? What would happen if we started to ask, “How can we make this easier?” instead of pushing people—and ourselves—to work harder?
We are so honored to welcome these incredible students to our program next week. We are so grateful to those who invested in them. And we will continue to move slowly and excitedly watch as Student Made unfolds, one step at a time.
Big hugs,
Kristen
PS: We are so excited to welcome nearly 300 hearts from around the world to our Human Leadership Program on August 11th and 12th! Join us to elevate your authenticity and humanity as a leader and to explore the future of leadership. A few attendees from our last program helped us create this video to share what the experience is like. We have a handful of seats remaining! Save $100 on the price of your ticket here.
PPS: I hope you’ll join us for REAL TALK tomorrow, Wednesday, at 11 a.m. ET! I’ll be interviewing a special guest about leadership. Join by registering here: https://bit.ly/3kWe2kT
