Do Cool Sh*t (28 page)
Authors: Miki Agrawal
The only thing stopping you from doing cool shit is yourself. Don’t rely on outside events or other people to make things happen. Put your head down, focus on your vision, and work, work, work.
4. What is the best life advice you can give to help someone else do cool shit?
Two answers:
- Solicit outside opinions, but ultimately learn to trust your gut.
- Don’t try to do too much cool shit at once. Write down your ten best ideas. Cross out nine of them. Give all your love and energy to your biggest idea—the one that keeps you up at night. If you can successfully focus on a singular vision, good things will happen.
5. What was the moment in your life that made you realize that you could stray from the norm and do cool shit on your own?
I used to work in advertising. Over the years, I watched several coworkers quit lucrative positions so they could follow their creative passions. One became a director, two wrote books, one produced a TV series, and another started a greeting card company. Watching these friends give up money and comfort in return for a deeper sense of satisfaction was tremendously inspiring. They gave me the courage to follow in their footsteps and take a similar path of my own.
RADHA AGRAWAL—MY TWIN SISTER
1. What does “doing cool shit” mean to you?
It means using the arts to shift culture. It means creating and following unique experiences that push one’s physical and mental limits. Most important, it’s service through community and laughter. Doing cool shit has to feel good, right?
2. What cool shit are you up to? And what cool shit are you planning in the future?
I started my company, Super Sprowtz, to shift the culture around nutrition and wellness education through the arts and media for preschool and elementary school children. There seemed to be a disconnect in the storytelling vis-à-vis nutrition education, and no one had created a solution that spoke to children first (i.e., that made it fun!), and so it seemed like the best place to start to really effect change from the ground up. Our goal is to be the default destination, whether through our educational products or online, for all things nutrition and ultimately environment education for parents. Our company mantra is “It has to be as entertaining as it is educational.” We have many, many exciting plans for Super Sprowtz, so stay tuned!
3. What was the most important lesson you’ve learned about doing cool shit in business?
If you don’t have a product you believe in and is worth waking up for in the morning and feeling a sense of purpose toward, you’re not doing cool shit. I believe in our double bottom line of doing good and doing well. Otherwise, it feels pointless. Also: go big or go home. You have to want it so badly because, man, entrepreneurship is hard work! Also, pick a passionate team who will take the trash out with you at night.
4. What is the best life advice you can give to help someone else do cool shit?
- Hang your hat on something you believe in.
- In the end, there are no rules.
- Learn balance. Work hard and play hard. You gain a lot of perspective from playing hard after you’ve worked a long day.
- Give, give, give.
- Nothing is perfect. Just get going and get started and learn to iterate. Once the energy is out there, it will live.
5. What was the moment in your life that made you realize that you could stray from the norm and do cool shit on your own?
I’ve had so many moments that affirmed why this was the right path for me, but I think my “AHA!” moment was when I was designing a children’s menu for
WILD.
I would sit with the kids who came in and color and tell stories about the superhero vegetable characters. I would watch child after child run to the counter and order more vegetables for his or her pizza. They would say, “Mom! I want more broccoli because I want to be super strong like Brian Broccoli!” I knew then I was on to something exciting and culture shifting, and the idea grew from there. My first leadership example was when I guided Miki out of the womb. I came out first and led the way five minutes before you entered the world.
An Exercise in Evolution
S
o as you can see from reading my story, I am not the same person I was eight years ago, when I launched my first business at twenty-six years old. I learned so much about myself through creating a business and putting it out into the world. And every step of this journey has changed my outlook on life.
WHAT I LEARNED
I don’t get scared anymore when I encounter something unfamiliar. I remember the first time I received tax documents from the IRS for my business, I freaked out. They were complicated (I swear it takes the IRS five pages to say what a normal human being would say in one), and the way the IRS communicates is just so cold and awful and their rules and demands were unfamiliar territory. Now, since I’ve seen these documents come in the mail many more times, it’s not scary anymore. I simply send the docs to my accountant and he takes care of it (thanks, Raj). It’s old hat, and I know now that everyone gets the same documents and it’s just standard procedure when you run a business.
I also learned that there is no point ever in freaking out. It solves zero problems! Nobody really knows exactly what they are doing in business when they first start, even if they’ve been to business school, but over time, we see patterns, experience familiar ups and downs, and the way we deal with issues gets easier and easier.
I remember the time I first had to let a manager go. I avoided the confrontation for as long as I could, but I knew that keeping this person in this management position was screwing things up for the business in the long run. I was scared to have the conversation and start over by myself again, but it was this experience that taught me how to face challenging circumstances. Now, if I ever feel scared or uncomfortable about something or someone, I can face it and know that I will always come out stronger and with more understanding because of it.
I learned that making good business relationships is no different than making good friends. Trust needs to be built, honoring your word is important, and having a good time getting to know the other is equally important.
One of the most important things in business and in life is that we have to be OK letting things go. It may be hard but it’s the key to positive change. Releasing things actually feels so good and it can even
save
your life!
For instance, do you know how to catch a raccoon? No? OK, I’ll tell you.
The best way to catch a raccoon is to create a small hole in the mud. Put spikes on the sides facing inward, and put a nut down in the bottom of the hole. The raccoon will put his paw in the hole and grab the nut. If he tries to pull his paw out while holding the nut, the spikes will rip his arm out and he will die. However, if he lets go of the nut, his arm will safely come out of the hole. The tragedy is that the raccoon will never let go of the nut and eventually he will die. The moral of the story is: let the nut go! The things that you are holding so dear will mean nothing if you will die trying to hold on to them.
Do Cool Shit Exercise
Detach yourself from your business. Take a 1,000-meter approach and look at where your business was when it started, where it is now, and where it can go. See what things could be improved if you could lose your attachment to them and be open to change. Is there anything holding back your business or anything that no longer fits? Holding on to things for the sake of nostalgia doesn’t make sense. Life and work is iterative. Doing cool shit is an exercise in evolution.
MY NEXT ITERATIVE PROJECT
Most recently (and completely separate from pizza), I launched my new company THINX (www.shethinx.com) with my business partners Antonia Dunbar and Rads (of course). We found our inspiration for THINX through a problem that all women have. As busy women, we’d sometimes forget when our “time of the month” would arrive, and we’d have accidents and embarrassing situations (and ruined clothes). We realized that pretty much all of our girlfriends have had the same experience. We couldn’t believe that there had been no innovation in undergarments for women that properly dealt with this issue. Over the course of three years, and after what seemed like a million iterations, we developed a patented line of underwear that is leak- and stain-resistant, breathable, and beautiful! We realized that there was no pair of underwear in the marketplace that thought of girls and women and protected us every day of the month.
We also realized that there was a massive problem in developing countries where women currently use sticks, old rags, and leaves to manage their monthly issue, and more than 67 million women in Africa alone have missed a week of school and dropped out early. So, we partnered up with AFRIpads, a Ugandan-based organization that creates washable, reusable cloth pads so that girls could easily afford them and go back to school and work without worrying. For every pair of underwear we sell, we fund the production of seven washable pads.
Buy one = fund seven!
We launched a Kickstarter campaign in February 2013 and successfully funded it by 130 percent (raising almost $70,000 between our Kickstarter campaign and on our website). We won the Daily Grommet Challenge in March 2013, beating out 165 other socially conscious products, and we won the Disruptive Innovation Awards in April 2013 from the Tribeca Film Festival! People gravitate to ideas that disrupt the status quo.
We have since acquired a sales rep for the United States and have received distribution inquiries from several countries and regions already (in South America, Canada, the Middle East, Scandinavia, and Australia). Yay!
I am extremely excited to see where this adventure takes us and even more excited to empower women around the world!
The ever-quotable Steve Jobs
had a great perspective on the big picture. Reading this quote changed everything for me:
Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact, and that is, everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you . . . the minute that you understand that you can poke life . . . that you can change it, you can mold it . . . that’s maybe the most important thing.
Think about that for a second. Knowing this has given me the power to believe that I can change the rules of my life and be a driving force to make positive change in the way society behaves. You have the power to create things and bring new ideas to the table that can positively affect the way this world operates.
Most people accept their current reality and expect that some governing body or other person with the right title or position will handle their problems, but this rarely happens. We can create new and better rules for society and we have a great opportunity to change the way things are by just choosing to participate and use the power of our voice and our actions.
When it comes to the other important stuff like friendships and romantic partners, it has to be the same way: ever iterating. Otherwise, the relationships grow stale and personal progress isn’t made. Both parties have to be willing to evolve and learn. Andrew and I have grown immensely in our quest to constantly improve our romantic relationship. We are open to learn everything we need to please each other. It’s never a one-way street, both of us are always willing to listen and grow together without any ego. We let go of all of the things that frustrate us because we know that we are both working hard to become the most actualized versions of ourselves who think about each other.
A great life is an ever-evolving life. Release the nut.
or, A Message of Encouragement and Empowerment
There are two lasting bequests we can give our children. One is roots. The other is wings.
—P
ULITZER
P
RIZE–WINNING EDITOR
H
ODDING
C
ARTER
J
R
.
D
ear future great -grandchildren,
Thank you for taking the time to read this book!
When I started to write this final chapter, I grabbed my “box of possibility” from my windowsill and opened it up to go through it. This box holds every single cool memory I’ve ever had, from tickets to the World Cup in South Africa to invitations to presidential birthday parties to letters from old lovers to plane ticket stubs from all over the world to little trinkets and notes from every adventure and business I’d ever created. And to think that this is just the beginning!
I recalled that I kept this box for one reason: to remind myself that the
choice
remains in my hands, the choice to continue to do cool shit or not. Do I want this box to be filled with a money, a set of keys to a Rolls-Royce and a boatload of tears because I hate my life, or am I continuing to fill it with the coolest possible memories I can conjure up on this planet while I am here for a short amount of time? You have the choice of what will go inside
your
box of possibility, so will that change the decisions you make in your life going forward?
I hope that above all else, you learned to put yourself out there in the world and try new things, talk with new people, travel to new places, build a community that inspires you, and create something meaningful, however big or small.
The world of today offers opportunities that did not exist when my parents were growing up, and the world will keep evolving at a faster and faster pace for all generations to come. So just go with it, ride the changing wave with excitement and motivation, and don’t resist the change, as it’s inevitable. Have fun with it!