I’m about to start an Executive MBA.
It was kind of on a whim, really. I’ve been toying with the idea of a Masters of some kind ever since the day I left University, which was, at this point (gulp), 28 years ago now. So, maybe not so much of a whim but the end of a long procrastination.
I was tired of academia at the end of my undergraduate degree. I was good at school, mostly found it easy, and definitely didn’t try as hard as I could have or achieved the results I should have. Mostly, it all seemed like checking one more box. My mother said I would be getting a degree, no argument, and so I did. Check.
(Also, mum… thank you.)
Then I didn’t have the money. Then I had the money and didn’t want to spend it on something so unfun. Then I was a mother and busy with all that. Then, I was a single mother. Then, I was just scared that my middle-aged brain would fail me.
But then I got recruited by Quantic, and something in me just said, “Why the hell not?” Here I am, stuck in middle management, feeling underutilized, and slowly falling behind inflation with my income. Maybe this is the thing that moves the needle.
And so, I am going to start. I clicked that button to pay my tuition last Thursday, feeling equal parts excited and terrified.
Doing the prep courses online has been fun so far. Albeit, there has been math. I don’t like math, and I haven’t done math since I was 16. Nor is my recollection of anything I did learn much good after 30-something years. I looked at “FV=PV(1+r)^{n}” (exponential functions, what?) and almost had a panic attack. Fortunately, I have a super-smart 9th grader doing 11th grade math who can be my tutor. (Which reminds me of an earlier post.)
I remain quite concerned that my inability to memorize things will get in my way, worried I will run out of energy and steam, and have no idea where I’ll find the time for things like projects and group work.
I am 100% starting before I’m ready.
Yet, sitting and journaling the other morning, I realized that this is something I do very well, this starting before I’m ready business. It has always served me well. In fact, my willingness to just begin something I have no idea how to accomplish yet is one of my strongest traits. (At least in my humble opinion.)
Here are 5 times I have started before I was ready
Let’s interview minor celebrities, traversing London alone at 16
My dream has always been to have a job as a writer. When I was 16, we had to do work experience for school. I enlisted my mum to help me land an internship in London for a teenage magazine called “Fast Forward”. So, while my friends sat in the passenger seat of their parents’ sedan for the short commute to an office on an industrial estate where they did filing and answered phones, I jumped on the underground alone for an hour commute to Bond Street station and started poking my nose into editorial meetings.
Such was my bravado that the editor, Kern, sent me to run an interview with the teenage stars of a TV show that was premiering at the time. Unfamiliar with them and thoroughly unprepared, I still managed to race across London on the tube alone and conduct the interview, which was later published. Then there was the cover photo shoot they sent me to supervise with another member of staff, where I jumped into the almost non-existent back seat of the photographer’s flashy, 1980s, red Porsche, knees to my nose and lighting stand digging into my hip as we zoomed through London streets late into the evening. I had no idea what I was doing, no preparation, and no experience to draw upon. It was fantastic!
Let’s manage Hispanic events without a lick of Spanish
My first job for a magazine in L.A. didn’t last long. I had a witch of a boss who ran through 4 assistants in 2 years (I lasted the longest, and I learned at the end there was a bet amongst the staff about how long I’d last, which I beat, and most of them lost). Also, the commute to the West Side of Los Angeles from Orange County was long. I was exhausted and demoralized. So, I took a job for a small event marketing company more locally. This job changed my professional trajectory.
One of the company’s core first accounts was for Tropicana Orange Juice, which was trying to increase its footprint in the Hispanic market. Which basically meant showing up at a Cinco De Mayo events with a branded 10x10 Easy Up and a team of eager teens, to hand out 2oz samples and manufacturer coupons. For reasons I don’t fully understand other than his desire to sleep in and not do the grunt work himself, my new boss put me in charge of the whole thing, from hiring to event management, working with a team of 20+ that largely spoke no English, while I knew no Spanish.
But, I never once said I couldn’t or didn’t know how. I just… started… and figured it out as I went along. I mostly blundered my way through. I learned SO MUCH, and, as the opening quote suggests, my self-confidence to do things I didn’t know how to do yet grew.
Let’s start a Photography Business with no training
When I had my daughter in 2009, I hired a photographer for a prenatal, birth, 6-month, and 1-year milestone photo package. I loved the photos she took and thought, “This looks fun; I bet I could do this for a living!” And so I decided to.
I could take a decent photo and had an artistic eye for light and composition, but I was by no means a trained photographer. I enlisted friends with babies and kids to let me take their photos, and slowly, over ten years, reached a decent level of skill by just diving in and experimenting, being dissatisfied by my results, and learning from my mistakes.
In year 4, I quit my 6-figure job and pursued photography full-time. I had never run a business and had no idea what I was doing. I leaped anyway, hoping the net would appear. (Spoiler: it didn’t.)
My initial assessment was accurate: it was fun, I could do it, but it was also harder than I thought to be financially successful. The sessions were usually the easy part; weddings were another business altogether with all the equipment and pressure. Marketing myself and making money was much harder than I thought it would be. Although I was doing relatively well by year 3, it wasn’t enough to be a primary income and, as I moved toward divorce, I had to put photography back on the sidelines before eventually sunsetting my business in 2019.
Undoubtedly, however, that journey deeper into my more creative side changed the trajectory of my life yet again. (More on that another time, perhaps.) But my life would be so different now if I’d waited until I was ready to start. I mean, if that’s what I was waiting for, I wonder if I would have even started at all.
Let’s write a play without ever having written a script
During the pandemic, I was taking an online writing course, and a friend of mine, who is a trained actress and a director in local theatre, saw my writing and asked me if I would write her a monologue for her to perform. We both needed to keep our creative juices flowing in lockdown.
So, I did. It was called “Out to Pasture,” and it was a fun, somewhat cathartic collaboration about all the middle-aged women's thoughts. I wrote it raw, barely edited it, and sent it over to her to do with what she wanted. She quickly memorized it and recorded it in a YouTube video performance. It mostly went unnoticed and unacknowledged except for by one person, Jenny. Jenny had started a nonprofit women’s theatre company and wondered if I would turn the monologue into an entire play they could put on at the local theatre they were associated with.
I had never written a play or script before. I thought I had said all I needed to say in the monologue I had already written and I had no idea how to expand it into a full play complete with narrative. And yet I said yes.
Undoubtedly, it’s not something I achieved alone. I had the guiding hand of two experienced actors and directors who helped me polish seven monologues into a one-woman play. But the act of saying yes before I was “ready” and before I knew what the heck I was doing, that’s the one I’ll take all the credit for. And outside of motherhood, it turned out to be one of my life's most fulfilling and rewarding experiences.
Let’s lead a Product Development team, with no Product Development Experience
I’ve been in real estate and technology for 21 years, with some involvement in product development, but never as a capital “P” Product Manager. I had success providing input into the development of some software products at one company and loosely managed some mature products at another, but it wasn't what I'd call proper Product Management or software development.
So when I saw an opportunity to work with one of the best and brightest founders in real estate technology, as a Director of Product, I had the audacity to apply. My real estate knowledge and prior management experience got me the job, but I was entering a new specialization, responsible for a high profile project, with no team and limited technical knowledge. I was absolutely NOT ready for this job. But, no surprise, I took it anyway.
Two years later, it has been the most intense crash course in product management and leadership. I had (have?) no idea what I was doing, and I still have a long way to go to say that I have the kind of chops some product leaders have. In many ways, I’ve been flying by the seat of my pants for 26 months and counting.
Reflecting on my progress—growing my team from 0 to 7 and earning a promotion in just 12 months - I realize my biggest strength throughout has been a willingness to start before I’m ready in minor ways too. I'm now a Subject Matter Expert in SMS and Email Regulation and Compliance, areas I knew nothing about two years ago. It was knowledge gained through trial-by-fire, with no one to guide me or educate me. It may seem ordinary to some, but I recognize the value in this mindset; not everyone I have worked with approaches work this way. It’s also challenging to coach and often baffling when you realize others don’t just think this way innately.
Maybe this whole post feels like a giant brag, but I think it’s helpful for us all to acknowledge the ways in which we show up with the most courage. We often forget what those things are, as I have repeatedly throughout my life. But it is in remembering the times I’ve dared to start before I was ready in the past, that I find the courage to do so again.
So, am I ready for an EMBA? Probably not. But I’ll figure it out.
Where have you started before you were ready?
I am so incredibly proud of you and know whatever challenges lie ahead you'll overcome them😘
You’re fabulous. You really are. You have so much courage and I know good things will come in this next blind jump. I learn by doing too…but have not necessarily busted out of my wheelhouse in these occasions as you seem to do regularly. Go get ‘em.