You can just do stuff

Let Me Tell You a Story

From a long long time ago in a galaxy far far away—or more specifically, about 15 years ago in rural southern Arizona. I was around 17 years old when I apparently just woke up one day and decided I wanted to do a whole bunch of stuff.

My senior year of high school, I did the following things of my own volition, basically self-directed and mostly by myself:

• I organized a food drive for my local food bank in Amado, my tiny hometown, through my high school (which was in a different town).
  
  

• I organized what I guess you’d call a TED Talk-type thing with some people I found inspirational.
  
  

• I tried to start a history club at my school.
  
  

• I started doing historical reenactments.
  
  

• I tried to organize a fall festival for the town where my school was, population about 20,000.
  
  

Why Am I Telling You This?

The point is not "oh look at me, I did a bunch of stuff." The point is: you could just do stuff.

Nobody told me to do any of that. I did get some institutional support in a couple of cases—for example, I had some contacts at a local foundation that funded the fall festival. And the reenactments were through the Santa Fe Ranch Foundation, a nonprofit in Santa Cruz County that I was involved with. But the rest of it? I just started doing it.

You Don’t Need Permission

Let me tell you about that talk I organized at my high school. Through my historical club and other activities, I’d gotten in contact with:

• The person running the Presidio Museum in Tucson at the time,
  
  

• Someone who had formerly been at the executive level of Habitat for Humanity Michigan, who had supervised hundreds or thousands of people,
  
  

• And one other speaker whose name I can’t remember.
  
  

I just emailed them. Separately. I said, "Hey, you want to give a talk at my high school? I think you’ve got some good stuff to say."

I hadn’t thought through who the audience would be, but I talked to a few teachers, and we ended up using a small auditorium. About 100 students showed up—not because they wanted to, but because they were brought in by their teachers. Which, let’s be real, is how school works. Still, we had three guest speakers give real talks to a big room of high school students because I woke up one day and thought it would be a good idea.

Same Energy, Different Scale

Same thing with the food drive. I just walked into the food bank in Amado one day and asked if I could do a food drive for them. They looked kind of confused but said okay and handed me a bunch of blue plastic bins with their logo on them. I took those to my school, put them in classrooms, ran the thing for a few weeks, and got a good haul of donations.

I have no clue how much we collected—I’d be making it up if I said a number—but it was enough to fill some bins. No one told me to do that. There wasn’t some big measurable outcome. But it helped a little, and that was enough. Again: you could just do stuff.

What This Has to Do With Business

Starting my business has been basically the same.

You get an idea. You wake up one day. You start doing it. You start reaching out to people. That’s really the whole thing. It sounds too simple to be true, but it is.

Why Write This At All?

It might sound like an odd thing to write a blog post about. But it seems to me a lot of people think they need a reason to start doing something. Or permission. Or credentials. Or a structure. You don’t.

You don’t need a reason to start something other than you want to.

That’s good enough.

When It Doesn’t Work

And lastly, I'm going to tell you about this fall festival and why it's an example of how it's not always going to work—and that's fine. So I got backing through the Santa Fe Ranch Foundation to organize this fall festival. I got, I don't know, at least a dozen businesses and local organizations and clubs. They showed up on a Saturday morning in October. And I had distributed some flyers and posters around town. But, you know, I was 17 and I didn’t know anything about advertising.

So at the end of the day, turns out basically nobody showed up for that. Because sometimes when you try to do stuff, it doesn’t work. A big-shot effort does not guarantee success.

Why It’s Worth Trying Even If It Doesn’t Work

I would argue that it’s worth trying stuff even if it might not work. Because no outcome is guaranteed. And if you never try anything, well then definitely nothing’s going to happen. You’re not going to get the places you want to go or do the things you want to do.

Odds are, some of it will work.

Okay, my biggest thing I tried to do—the fall festival—didn’t work. But the speaking series worked. We fed some people. I got to shoot a cannon full of oatmeal. I got scholarships to travel to Los Angeles and San Francisco on two separate occasions for trainings through this foundation. And doubtless, I got some kind of learning experience through that.

So what are you going to try to get out and do?

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