Lessons From Two Summer Weeks in Detroit
By Alex Schluter
It was a Wednesday as I drove across the green belly of Michigan from my parents’ home in Evanston, Illinois towards Detroit. I was showing up three days late to Venture For America’s 2022 Training Camp after a positive COVID test the week prior. Watching the passing trees, listening to Kendrick Lamar’s new album, it felt as though I was taking a large step into something new and exciting, and I was. I felt nervous. Nervous about being surrounded by 130 recent college grads, as this would be the most socially demanding setting I had been in since arriving at college 6 years earlier.
At lunch, my anxieties were quickly assuaged when I was invited by a few friendly VFA Fellows to sit at their cafeteria table in Wayne State’s dining hall. I easily joined the conversation, getting their brief backstories and giving my own. One of these Fellows, Tim, commented on my heaping salad and we discovered that both of us happened to be vegan, which I took as a good omen. Tim was an especially positive energy throughout that week, constantly giving out high fives, words of encouragement, or dancing for no reason except to make a long day a little more exciting.
After the scheduled programming of the day, Fellows were given the opportunity to take the stage and provide a story that connected with one of VFA’s five credos (basically VFA’s organizational values). At the end of my first day, I watched two Fellows, Chandler and Kristen, get up on stage and speak personal stories into the room with strength, charisma, and poise. Stories that were motivational and centered on helping others. It felt like I was at a TED conference for really freaking cool twenty-somethings, and when those two speakers poured a bit of themselves into that room, I was filled with joy and inspiration.
By the end of that day and every day at Training Camp, my soul was brimming with hope and optimism, usually as a direct result of another Fellow’s inspiring story, or simply from a delightful conversation with the Fellow I was sitting next to as we listened to speakers and took part in activities aimed at arming us with the skills necessary to thrive at our new startups. We learned a lot about entrepreneurship, but more broadly, how to adult and how to get the most out of the rest of our unstructured lives. The two ideas I heard at camp that imprinted themselves most permanently on the inside of my head were more applicable to life advice than entrepreneurship-specific advice. These ideas were the accountabilibuddy and the personal board of directors.
Besides being incredibly amusing to say (accountabilibuddy, accountabilibuddy, accountabilibuddy) an accountabilibuddy is a buddy who will hold you accountable to the goals that you set for yourself, and who you will do the same for in return.
This idea was presented by two VFA Alumni, who had become accountabilibuddies shortly after their own Training Camp. The accountabilibuddy framework has two essential elements – the first, goal setting, and the second, regular meetings at predetermined intervals (your choice of every month, two months, quarter etc.) to check-in on progress. If you are anything like me, you work better on a deadline. The accountabilibuddy system provides an easy and fun way to set deadlines and a time restriction on accomplishing goals in the most pressing areas of your personal, professional, or social life that you are looking to grow in or explore.
I now have my own accountabilibuddy and next week we are meeting to discuss goals across the categories of health and wellness, career, and social/relationships. Two goals I have are to start a 10 minute daily meditation practice, and to find a weekly place to practice Spanish with a group or another individual. Without a deadline, these goals would likely drift off into the ether, aspirational but likely unachieved. Now, with the help of my accountabilibuddy, I hope to achieve these goals, but get back to me in a month and I’ll let you know how that is going.
The personal board of directors was an idea brought up by Lorenzo Gomez III, an entrepreneur from San Antonio. He told his own personal career journey, from building homes for his father, to working at a grocery store, to a job at the tech company Rackspace, that took him to London and back to San Antonio. The common thread through his most pivotal decisions – to move from the produce aisle at a grocery store to behind a desk at a computer store, to join a startup called Rackspace, to travel to London and gain a new perspective on the world – was that his initial instinct told him to turn down the opportunity. In all of these situations a head wiser than his own, whether it was a brother or a colleague, provided sage advice and urged him to take the opportunity.
His own experience demonstrates that the wisest among us do not arrive at their best decisions and ideas in a vacuum; instead, they rely on a trusted group of family, friends, and colleagues to advise them through life’s toughest decisions. Lorenzo even went so far as to officially appoint his own board of directors by having a conversation with them individually, and telling them that they have been appointed to a position with few perks, but hopefully, a bit of honor.
It was not until I met all of the wonderful 2022 Fellows in my cohort that I truly understood what Venture for America was, and if there is any single encompassing lesson from that week, it is to surround yourself with people you admire, who you want to be changed by. Whether these are your friends, your coworkers or other people in your community, seek out the people who you want to emulate and take intentional steps to access their wisdom and push one another into becoming the people you would like to become.
Making new connections isn’t easy. Socializing is inevitably harder for some of us than for others, but making a single plan with someone you enjoy spending time with and admire is a great place to start. And if you haven’t found that person yet, find a local community, a workout group, a volunteer organization, or a book club where you can meet those people— maybe you will find the accountabilibuddy you never knew you needed, or a fresh new perspective for your personal board of directors. I was lucky enough to meet 130 people who inspired me over the course of two weeks this summer in Detroit.
As the magic of these two weeks fades, and the work of building a new life for myself begins, I am left to find ways to inject magical moments into my daily life in San Antonio. I found magic this weekend, when I stumbled upon a turtle that had strayed from its home by the River Walk, in an aerial yoga class that pushed me outside my comfort zone, and in a coffee table my new roommate Michelle and I struggled to transport from a local thrift shop. There is plenty of magic out there and I am hopeful.