I had time to think.  I wandered the streets. When I got tired, I tucked into cafes and did so much reading my eyes hurt.  I did so much writing my fingers ached.  I just had so much to say – and I finally I felt there was enough time and freedom to say it.  I was making lists and dreaming up all the things I wanted my new business to be – because, afterall, that was why I moved to Southeast Asia – to pursue travel, writing, and social entrepreneurship.

2011 was the year I retired from old ideas – the ones weighing me down with the way I thought I was supposed to be living.  I retired to give myself permission.  To do what is in my heart to do.  To live on my own terms.  And to enjoy it.
It was lonely at times, but ultimately I would end up finding insight or meeting a new friend somewhere within those spaces.  Last year on Christmas night, I went up to a stranger, joined her at her table, and we ended up spending the next few days enjoying each other’s company and sharing travel stories.  She even stopped by to see me a few months later and say hello while I was getting settled in Phnom Penh.

This year has been like that.  Meaningful connections.  Inspiration.  Evidence that things work out when you decide to dive in.

Now that the year is coming to a close, now that I am finding my way while living and creating and committing in Cambodia,

This is what I would have loved to have known.

When I boarded the plane on that one-way ticket.  The hardest thing I had ever done.  If I could have had a friend sitting next to me who already knew what the year would hold, who could hold my hand during take-off – this is what I would have wanted to hear.

THE WALLS FALL SILENTLY.  You will walk up to where they used to be – expecting to find yourself stuck, again.  You will realize you are free instead.
Practice gratitude in these moments.  (And don’t forget to keep reaching out your hand – you will be surprised to find that so many walls are no longer where you left them.)

There will be enough.
So go ahead, jump.
Dare to let life rush in to help you get where you need to go.
And P.S. …after you think you’ve already jumped, you will find yourself at another cliff.
Jump again.
Start, and keep starting.

Your gifts have been waiting.  They are already ready for you.  They are begging to be used.  All you have to do is show up.
So – show up.

You already have what you need to get there.
….and “getting there” it turns out, is just a tiny shift.
It requires no plane rides.  No going-anywhere.  No moving around.  No waiting.  Or working super hard.  Or changing who you are in order to get there.
Instead, the shift will be easy.  It will happen quickly!  And the velocity will sync you with exactly where you need to be.

You’ll get what you ask for.  So go ahead – ask for what you want.  Don’t be afraid to want it.  You deserve every single joy.  And here’s a hint: tt will arrive looking differently than you expected – so look at the world with possibility and creativity.  You’ll be sure not to miss it.

Rather than spending your energy trying to change – spend your energy making more room for yourself.  Try to be more You.  All that parts and pieces.  Because your job is not to be perfect.  Your job is to be human – to be wide-awake alive.

You, heart wide open. You, embracing imperfection and including all those pieces.  You, epically vulnerable. It is the most powerful, barrier-breaking key to everything – and everyone.
Stay open.  Exercise endurance for holding that space.
Your authenticity lives here.  It’s illuminating.  People’s barriers will melt in the presence.

You will attract the love you need.  It is going to literally walk right up to you.  It is going to ask for your name.  It will ask to come in.  Again, and again.  Even after you thought it walked out on you.

Practice loving boundaries.  Not everyone who walks up and offers love should necessarily be invited in.

You will hold someone’s life in your hands this year.  You will do everything you can to help — and once you have done all you can, leave it at that.  Put the sad memories to rest.  Let it go.  For your small hands, for not being able to hold all the hurt you want to heal – forgive yourself.

This year will be difficult.  You can handle it.

When you are lost, Serendipity will find you and drop hints like bread crumbs on your trail of unknowing.  Like, really super big massive clues…you won’t miss ‘em, don’t worry.
The even better news is: Serendipity keeps visiting as long as Gratitude is around.
The world is conspiring with you.

When people are stuck in their fears while watching you rise above yours, they may say things they don’t mean.  Sharp things.  Piercing words.  In their heart of hearts, they’re cheering you on. Think of them – remember them – in that light.  Turn your cheek.  Keep going.

As you keep going, notice that critics stop showing up outside around you when they stop showing up in your head.  FACT.

Commit, wholeheartedly.
Diligently quit the things at aren’t working for you.
Ship the ones that are.

You are not running out of time.

There will be a constant stream of times, places, and reasons for celebrating what is most beautiful.

When things get bad, remember there’s always a reason to say thank you when things are falling apart.

And finally – there is always always a way to be more kind.  Find that way.

- – - – - -

Happy holidays.

While pieces of my daily life abroad have started to transition from foreign to familiar, I still find it alarming, refreshing – and delightful, even – to see or hear something today that totally catches me off-guard.

Being caught off-guard usually brings an interesting new lesson. And this story certainly did that for me.
- – - – -

Out in the countryside there was a woman who would perch in her thatched home, hanging her leg through a hole in the floor.

A hole in the floor.

As in, someone consciously sawed a hole into the floor of that house.  Punched through the bamboo boards like a cookie cutter.  Sliced out a sizable chunk of the floor (which is raised up above ground on stilts in the typical Cambodian countryside fashion).

Photo credit: thanks to A_of_Doom on flickr

Now, why on earth would someone cut a hole in their floor? I wondered.
And why does the woman sit up there in her house-on-stilts with her leg draped outdoors?

I heard this story and I just didn’t get it.  Could not even guess what that was all about.

My friend smiled widely in anticipation of sharing the answer with me.

The answer was this – she had arthritis.  Hanging her leg down released some of the pressure on the joints.  It relieved her pain.

Wait.  I was thinking.
Why couldn’t she do that by sitting up on a chair or something?  Or find another method of elevating her leg to ease the pressure?  Or maybe visit a doctor, seek out some kind of medicine or other therapy?

How many other ways, besides cutting a hole in the floor! are there for finding a solution?
My mind instantly wanted to go into this question.  Because personally, I think I would have approached – and solved – this problem in a different way.

And – aha! – right here’s the lesson I learned.

What makes sense to me doesn’t necessarily make sense for another person.  Especially someone from a completely different culture, society, background, religion, life experience, with different resources, etc.

I was really happy to hear about this hole in the floor — it makes it very obvious for me to see that I cannot ever prescribe what I would consider to be a solution to a problem that is not my own, particularly in a home that is not my own.

Clearly there would be a really good chance I would not hit the nail on the head on this one. Why?  Because I am not in a position to truly understand all the factors that led up to a cut a hole in the floor! kind of decision.

Maybe a doctor was the one who suggested the hole in the first place.
Maybe she had tried everything else possible and this was her Hail Mary.
Maybe it is a multi-purpose kind of hole in the floor?
How can I know.  And, who am I to judge.

I wouldn’t have thought to cut a hole in the floor….but after a few moments of really pondering, I started to think that cutting a hole in the floor could actually be considered pretty damn creative.

And most importantly, it is a solution that truly worked for her (or, appeared to.  Again – how do I know.)
I just hope she and her family are careful when they walk through their house in the dark at night!

If I can get to place where I can see why someone might make that decision – if I can start to see how this actually makes sense, how it makes sense for her, then I think I can learn a lot from something so simple and curious as a hole in the floor.

- – - – -

For more reading on design thinking + social innovation, I recommend having a look at the Ideo Design for Social Impact resources.

Being able sit next to her – together sunken into the scoop-chair in my living room in Phnom Penh – cozy and catching up on life…it was the best thing.

For years, she and I have been parting ways and reconnecting – following dreams, following love, following careers.
And, as with all things important, time and distance makes no difference.

Sisters?  Nearly everyone asks us.

Put simply – yes.

To have someone in my life who can continuously point a light for me toward where I am going when I most need a reminder – I can only hope that other people are as lucky as I am to have that kind of friend.  I wouldn’t be here without her.

‘After all, seasons change, so do cities; people come into your life and people go.
But it’s comforting to know that the ones you love are always in your heart. And if you’re very lucky, a plane ride away.’

Right afterwards I transcribed from memory what he shared, recorded in the way he explained it to us…
- – -

“Me.  Me is the word like ‘mother’ that we put before another word.  If you talk about koh…maybe you talk about an ox or maybe it is a cow, we don’t know.  But if you say me koh then we know for sure, it is a mother cow.

But – also – if you say ‘me’ before soldier, before police, this means General.  High officer.
Let me explain why you will hear many words with me.
Let me give you a small history of Cambodia.

BC.  Before it all.  Backwards in time, one or two thousand years.  The Cambodian people didn’t have religion.  They had beliefs, but no religion.  We believed in ancestors, we believed in the earth.

Back during that time, women were very important.  They had high rights.  Many leaders were women.  It was what you call in the US a matriarchy.

Photo credit: thanks to OceanOs on flickr

Many women, they organized and they created a country.  The first ruler AD was a Queen.  And during that time, the first Indian man came for business.  He was Muslim, and he brought this religion.  And because Cambodia had none, we just take this one.  Same soon after with Buddhism.  We don’t have so we just take.

The Queen, she married an Indian man – the son of a king.  After that their son became the ruler.  He made everything Hindu.  You know in Hindu, women have no rights.  Even the Gods – no woman.  Same in Buddism, not many women Gods.  And so, after that time, through the 13th century, the women have little rights.  Men have much power.  But now, today in this time – we start to think more about ‘equal.’

So, the word me it comes from that old time.  The word me, it means – important.  It means ‘main,’ ‘central.’  It means ‘leader.’

You say housewife, and we say me p’teah.  Leader of the home.
Me rien.  Main lesson.
Me phlouv.  The main road.

We call a door twier – but the important posts that go around the door, the door frame to hold it all up – we call that me twier.

And the roof that protects the home, also starts with me.

In beginning time in Cambodia, we started with the word me.  And after 5 or 6 changes to the word, it eventually evolved into the word khmae.

But in English, you say Khmer.  It means “the Cambodian people.”

The word “khmae” – the root of this word to describe all Cambodian people – it comes from power of women.”

To learn more about the women’s rights movement in Cambodia, I suggest following Mu Sochua’s blog here.

- – -

I added this post to Tara Sophia Mohr‘s 2011 Girl Effect Blogging Campaign – you can check out the running list of blog posts here.

In between watering the pots on the terrace and hanging the linens out to dry in the morning sun – she tries on my roommate’s shoes and flips through my old copies of Vogue.
She makes sure we have things like hot pink pillows adorned atop our loveseat and purple polka-dot curtains in our kitchen.

She surprises and delights me with the small touches she puts on everything she does.

One day I discovered her secretly drawing on a treasured scrap piece of paper with an orphaned pencil she had found in the house.
Now that the secret is out in the open, she sits at the table with me sometimes.  While my face is glued to the screen of my laptop, she fetches my roommates colored pencils from the bedroom – which she must have found by thoroughly investigating our belongings in between lovingly keeping them organizing for us.   She looks at advertisements in magazines and sketches them onto any material she can find to draw on.

She flips through the pages and gossips with me in Khmer, of which I can’t really understand all the words – but girly gossip over fashion magazines seems to be a universalism that does not really require translation.

Someone recently asked me if I feel lonely when I am working at home by myself, and I had to laugh.

Channy leans over my shoulder as I take a break to make drip-coffee in the kitchen, and as I take a sip out of my mug she reaches for her own clear plastic dixie-cup and sucks down the last drop of Cambodian iced coffee which she bought at a street cart on the way to work.

She watches me as I cut up an apple for a snack, curling the peel in one long strip.

We have a happy healthy curiosity for one another.

And she always takes up the chance to act like Mom – inevitable since she has a daughter near my age.

“K’dau, k’mao!” she calls after me as I head out the door, leaving the house without a sweater – so I run back inside to grab one.  Cover up or the sun will turn your skin black! is a very motherly thing for a Cambodian woman to say.

When she found me curled up feeling ill one morning she heated up the clothes iron, wrapped it in a towel and tucked it under my arms next to my tummy.

She invites me to join meals with her family, and we sit together in a small circle inside a small home crowded around a big bowl of rice.

Channy is someone who reminds me that ‘home’ is not really a place – it is the people you are with.

Historically it is a bit of a low season for me – leaves falling and the air chilling into crispy-cold mornings that get into your bones.  I usually start to feel sluggish and sad during this time of year.  I thought that being in a tropical climate, I wouldn’t feel the Summer-to-Fall deceleration.  Guess I was wrong.

And in that respect, I am thankful for the recent cloudy weather to match my mood and give me permission to curl up, and attempt to hide away from the world amidst the puffy cushions of the bamboo scoop-chair in my living room.

All the rain has been a symbolic part of a recent feeling of being overwhelmed.  But in Cambodia, it has also equated to serious flooding.  Water in some provinces is up to people’s necks.  The unrelenting Mekong has been inching up the bank here in Phnom Penh.  And in a recent state of my own personal distress, I wondered – Where is the point where it all comes spilling over?
I have been imagining that I will wake up one morning and step out of bed into ankle-deep water – the city streets turned into canals, like it just was with flooding in Siem Reap.

To say the least, the past couple weeks did not look like I expected them to.

I expected to be writing on this blog nearly everyday.  I expected to be traveling around the (now flooded) countryside and sharing stories, feeling like the world is my oyster and staying right on course.
I expected to do what I said I was going to do.  Or at least something close to it.

In the way I thought these 6 weeks would go, things did not work out.  But many other things did.  Not the syllabus per say, but things that were sparked because the Syllabus was made.

But right now, I am taking a moment and lamenting the fact that what I said I was going to do has not been done yet.

For that, I am sorry.

Instead, during these past few weeks, life has been overflowing for me with the unexpected.
Flood waters coming in.  Dear friends floating out.
Wholesome new endeavors, contrasted with flagrant abuses of power and good intentions gone wrong.
A broken neck.  Car crashes.  And cancer.

Now there are hospitals and temples and weddings to get to this month.

I received bad news the day after we had been praying at the temple, on the last day of P’chum Ben.  I wish I had closed my eyes tighter, prayed more deeply, asked for more peace.

P’chum Ben was the recent 15 day-long holiday.  The festival of feeding the ancestors.  It is the time when spirits come back and families can ease the hungry ghosts’ suffering by offering food to eat.  The Buddhist temples fill with offerings of all kinds – foods, flowers, rice and riels. 

If you want to have good merit during Pchum Ben, you must visit  at least 7 temples.  Because your ancestors might show up at the other temple, so how can they find you if you don’t visit enough Wats during the 15 days?

Well, I only made it to two Wats – perhaps therein lies the whole problem of feeling a bit down lately…because I didn’t go and earn my merits.
Or maybe it has simply been the ghosts responsible for what seems to be a different feeling in the air now?

I can’t tell for sure, but I suppose that the good news is my house and my heart remains above water-level.  And I am sending my thoughts out to those who have not been so lucky.

So, on Sunday afternoon, my friend obliged to teach me how to make num plai aei – one of my favorite sweet Cambodian snacks…I regularly make special trips to the local market just to buy it.

Rice powder is kneaded into a dough and small pieces of solid palm sugar are wrapped into it, then rolled into balls the size of a longen fruit.  Drop them in a pot and boil them until they pop up from the bottom of the pan and start to float.  Let ‘em cool, then bite into one – the palm sugar has turned into a sweet oozing filling.

Delicious.

Can’t see the slideshow above? Follow this link to view the photos on flickr.

Is there a better way to solve current problems? How do we create a viable social business idea? What makes a venture great? How do we know the true impact? Who am I to try?

Social Entrepreneurs – What are we seeking?

It is a personal question, isn’t it? As well as an entrepreneurial one. Good thing then that this is called a Personal MBA – because yep, we’re going to go there….but not until a bit later on. (Also, credit where credit is due, I do believe “Personal MBA” was coined by one very helpful Josh Kaufman from personalmba.com.)

As social entrepreneurs, we want to change systems. To shift markets. To revolutionize.
And – we seek meaningful work, contribution, connected community, equality, and excellence.

Social entrepreneurs are relentless in this pursuit.

I recently came across this great summary from Charles Tsai at SocialCreative

How are we going to do that?

We need tools.

Tools!

Tomorrow I am planning to talk about tools, starting with MARKETS.  One of the unique and powerful ways that social entrepreneurs achieve successes is by using market forces to change the way people think, consume, and create.

I’ve got a couple examples in mind for tomorrow, but if you have a few yourself, bring them along.

See you then.

And now, after a 54-hour business-building break, let’s get back to the Syllabus.

Today I have a story to share – it is full of a lot of questions.  I’m not sure I have the answers, but I think it’s a good place to start.

Let’s talk about chasing power lines.

—————————-

One evening last January, just after officially moving to Phnom Penh, I stumbled across an intriguing concept.  The very next day I hopped on a bus to head to Battambang for the first time…to chase this question:

Is this a viable business idea?

Somewhere in the middle of a 6 hour bus ride, I remember feeling…
(1) intense exhilaration = because this is exactly what I want to be doing,
(2) immense gratitude = because I’m amazed I am actually doing it,
(3) and what the hell am I doing! = because, well…I really had no idea what I was doing.

The idea I was chasing was from reading an article in Fast Company about husk power – an energy system that can generate electric power in off-grid rural areas using discarded rice husk as fuel. 

Husk Power Systems is a for-profit social enterprise out of Bihar, India.  HPS is pioneering several concepts and systems via their mission to provide reliable, renewable, affordable electricity to millions of people.

In my mind, they are outstanding – a statement which necessitates the question: Why? By what definition or criteria?

What makes an social venture outstanding?

Excited to figure it all out, I arrived in Battambang which is Cambodia’s rice-farming capital.  Trying to evaluate whether there was an opportunity with electricity + social enterprise in Cambodia – I poured over Cambodia’s government electrification plans, past NGO reports, and anything I could find regarding Husk Power Systems’ operations in India, wondering…

Can that innovation and approach be replicated here?

To do my research, I spent several days camped out in Kinyei Café just as they were getting their start – those fantastic early days, when menus were written on white paper with a Sharpie, and staff were still taste-testing their own creations to perfection. 

During that time I heard about a biodigester project somewhere outside of Battambang.  I had found a lead! A lead for finding out more.  But I had no idea where the location was, and I couldn’t find it on any maps, and I knew only a few words in Khmer.

Thankfully, I was introduced me to Racky Thy.  Racky grew up in that province and knew the ropes, so we set off on his motorbike to find the project site.

And find it we did – what was left of it.  There was a only a sign, denoting the abandoned space.  It was shut down.  Empty.  We deducted that they may have closed down, had the area became grid-connected.  If we were being optimistic, we would have hoped that it closed because the project had already achieved its goals.  Unfortunately, I couldn’t keep myself from going straight to thinking…

Why did the project fail?

I had found some information about the project’s investment and exciting beginnings, but I did not find information about its end.
I found myself wishing for dialogue about what happened, since learning from others’ projects has been the most invaluable part of my journey thus far.

But, because I found myself presuming this project’s failure (before even talking to anyone!), it made me realize that I really needed to get the whole story first before I started forming my opinions.  Rather than make assumptions…

Why not go to the source and ask?

[Now, friends, I have not yet followed up to collect the whole story.  So today, I am committing to go the next step - to seek out this week the project administrators themselves.  I bet they have a really interesting story.  So stay tuned for an update on this one…]

I wondered – with this projects, with others – in our efforts and experiments and greatest attempts at tackling issues surrounding poverty…what is the true effect of these actions within the communities we want to be helping.

What is the impact?

From a failed project.  From a successful one.  On who?  And how can we know?  (And… who is ‘we,’ anyway?)

We continued to be curious that day.  We chased the powerlines down the dirt road.   We were looking for a community where the power lines stopped.   If people are not getting their electricity from the biodigester OR from the grid, how do people get electricity into their homes? 

“Cambodian snow,” Racky joked as we choked on red dust from a truck passing our motorbike on the way.

Far out into the countryside, we stopped at numerous houses.  We interrupted the mid-afternoon conversations of farmers and families to inquire where their electricity was coming from.

How are people currently solving the problem?

We finally found a family with two Japanese diesel engines tucked away (out of sight but never out of ear-shot) in a wooden shed behind their home.  The diesel engines go on at certain hours throughout the day, and families’ homes are connected to the diesel system via the power lines – infrastructure that his been developed but not yet connected to the grid system.

The woman showed us how it all worked, and explained it was a difficult business – a lot of hard work.

People were also stopping by to drop off car batteries for recharging, used like small generators inside the homes to power small appliances like the television and light fixtures.

It was quite a system.

Of course, an entrepreneur must wonder…

Is there a better way?

And would people value it; care about it; pay for it?

Is there a market opportunity here – could a solution be created that is socially and environmentally better than the current alternatives?

As clear as it was that I was looking at a system for accessing electricity – it was as foreign to me as I was to them.

I thought more about Husk Power in India – how it was created by founders who came from the place in which they started their venture.

Who am I to be here?

Is it actually a good thing? Is it really any of my business?  What do I know?

We hopped back on the moto and went back towards town.
The sun beat on my back.  The dust blew in my face and I was wishing I had thought to bring a kromah just when Racky turned his head to ask me – surprised I didn’t know better – Why didn’t you bring a kromah!? 
I have so much to learn.
And there are simply some things I will never really know much about.

I am constantly sitting in the vastness of things I do not know.  It is very humbling, liberating, fascinating to have days when I realize…wow, I know nothing. 

Maybe that is how we realize it is time to empty the cup.

So, I wondered as I pondered the day’s events…now that I know I don’t know...

Where could this lead me?

—————————-
One of my greatest first lessons in social entrepreneurship has been this:

Spend a day chasing power lines, see where it leads you.

****Update: How ironic…news from the same day in the Phnom Penh Post: “Bio-fuelled power plant to go online” at a rice mill in Kampong Speu.  Perhaps we’ll have to go check it out…

Here is our slightly unconventional and partially bare-boned course outline for the next 6 weeks.

I hope it is subject to change. (That’s what makes it fun!)

I am coming here each day, impromptu and unplanned. Meaning – we are going to create this thing as we go along.

It’s all open.  I am not running the show, I am showing up.

It’s best to create something fresh, everyday – things always taste better that way.

I want to be open to whatever opportunities we can whip-up – which requires taking action and doing things on the spot (and is a true challenge for me personally…because my default style tends to be to sit like a hen and roost on top of my ideas and thoughts, rather than shoo them out in the open).

This course, to be truly valuable, will be open to suggestion.
And, that’s the point.

The Point.

What I hope we will get out of this – what I hope we will take forward into our ventures is …

Recalibration

That we will have made a lasting time and space for:
Better questions.  Reflective pauses.  Disappointing failure.  Personal alignment.  Passionate discovery.

Authenticity

Excitement for bright spots where things are working.  Humility, transparency, and compassion where things are not.

Inspiration

Ideas about mixing money and meaning.  Concepts and structures for building ventures that intend to solve social problems.  Rethinking the way we have been trying to do good in the world so far.

The Itinerary

I think you can start to see a general theme, here.  I like open-ended plans.  Plans that don’t look like plans at all.

I don’t know the Itinerary yet.

And I am not sure if you operate like I do, but – to me – ‘I don’t know yet’?
That, my friends, is the smell of Freedom.

So toss the map out the window…we will be following our noses.

We are the map makers.

The schedule is wide open.
An open invitation for adventure.

Because it just so happens that passionate people in wide open spaces is a universal summons for serendipity.

Don’t be surprised to see a few delightfully unexpected things happen during the course of this course.

Let’s go exploring.

After Startup Weekend, we will probably be hitting the open road.  And it feels like the wind might be blowing to the Northeast…

Curriculum

Topics:
WHY  -  MARKETS  -  INNOVATION  -  ALIGNMENT  -  IMPACT  -  VENTURES

Week 1 – September 5th -9th – Why Social Entrepreneurship. Why You.
Week 2 – September 12th – 16th – Understanding Markets
Week 3 – September 19th – 23rd – Seeking Innovation
Week 4 – September 26th – 30th – Right Alignment
Week 5 – October 3rd – 7th – Positive Impact
Week 6 – October 10th – 14th – Creating Your Venture

Final Exam – October 14th
Venture Pitch.
I am going to pitch my venture.  And for an extra challenge, I will also pitch it to you in Khmer language.
(It’s a good incentive for me to continue my language studies!)

The Finale – October 15th
Join me live at TEDx Phnom Penh in Cambodia.

‘Graduation’ Celebration – October 16th
If you’re in Phnom Penh, join me for a BBQ at my house.

And after that point, class will no longer be in session but this is what I will be up to:

Home for the Holiday – On October 17th I am hopping on a plane and headed Stateside for 3 weeks, but coming back to Phnom Penh in time to catch Cambodia’s Water Festival starting November 9.

After nearly a year apart, I will be at home in Oregon to visit my family, watch a friend walk down the aisle, attend a Duck game, and gather resources for my venture.
So expect a #socent #tweetup in Portland during this time.

And November 14 will the Week 1 of Startup Life in Cambodia.

RULES!

(rules?)

Actually I’m not too keen on those strict, boxy-looking things.

But let me put out a few requests.

This is a safe space.

This is an open-learning course.
I just went back through notebooks from the past 6 months of all of my scribbled-out thoughts.  My perspective has changed so much already!  In that short amount of time!

Here, we are allowed to change our minds.
And – in fact – that’s the whole idea.

To start – and to build forward – in a spirit of learning and transparency.

I want to chronicle the learning.
I want to remember where I came from and how I got to where I am.  To realize the critical moments, the invaluable experiences, the lightbulbs that turned on in order to bring me to a new way of thinking – especially if it is a way that is really going to change my approach to life and to business.

So I am reserving the right to change my mind.  To change direction.
To get it all wrong in order to learn to do it better.  To stumble, and fall forward.

I reserve the right to be free in this learning process.
You, of course, receive the same.

And if you don’t dig it – Please go away.

This isn’t the place for you.
But if this is cool with you, I am really excited you’re here.

No student loans.  No application.  No entrance exam.
You feel passionate about making the world better?  That is enough.
It is more than enough.

There is only one requirement:

Please bring your whole self to class.
We’re going to need all the pieces and parts and apps:
Your creativity.  Your compassion.  Your shadows and doubts.  Your questions.  The fears.  Your values and ambitions.  The parts you love and the parts you’re not sure about.

See all of you tomorrow.