52 Cups of Coffee: Inspiring and insightful stories for navigating life’s uncertainties (20 page)

Seth Godin

Pain Quotidien in New York, New York

Small house coffee

Fail more often.

There is a passage in
Seth Godin’s best-selling book,
Poke the Box
, which goes like this: “Take action. Move forward. The world doesn’t have room for standing still anymore. You have to innovate. Take initiative.”

Take initiative.

Interestingly enough, that was how I ended up sitting across from Seth in a delightful French-style bakery in Manhattan, enjoying a fresh croissant with a dollop of organic chocolate spread, which Seth plopped on my plate and insisted I try because, “it puts Nutella to shame!”

I can replay the moment in my head like a movie: the a
tmosphere, the colors of the restaurant, the sound of the rain outside—and it’s one I wouldn’t soon forget. How could I forget the day I sat down with my hero (and 13-time
New York Times
best-selling author), for whom I had ridiculous respect and admiration?

* * *

The story starts five weeks before I met Seth. I was in Chicago, waiting for my connecting flight to Detroit after going to a wedding in Wyoming. Over the intercom, they announced the flight was oversold, and they were looking for volunteers to take a later flight. I raised my hand. Rerouting through Nashville and arriving in Detroit four hours behind schedule seemed like a small sacrifice to make in exchange for a $440 travel voucher to anywhere Southwest flew.

The real difficulty was deciding where to travel with my newly acquired funds. A mutual friend knew I was a big fan of Seth
’s work and said if I could get to New York City, he might be able to set up a meeting between the two of us. That was all I needed to hear. I sent some emails, booked a flight, and a few weeks later found myself sitting in front of Seth, which proved that his manifesto for taking initiative works.

I was excited to learn about the path that had led Seth to where he
was today; however, our conversation took a different route. This detour shouldn’t have surprised me. Seth was well-known for his unconventional thinking, so it made sense that our conversation would be unconventional as well. He wasn’t interested in outlining his path to prominence—his recipe for becoming a successful entrepreneur, CEO, author, and game-changer.

The reason was that he, like every other success story, had a unique set of circumstances and skills with which to work. A set that neither I, nor anyone else, could replicate. I also had my own unique set of skills and circumstances.
Thus, a more relevant use of our time would be talking about the
mindset
he had developed during the process. He wanted to help me identify places where his insight might be beneficial as I progressed in my career. I was moved—and grateful—for his genuine interest in helping me succeed.

The ironic part was that much of our conversation was about failure.

Seth told me he had failed a lot before he hit 30 and pointed out that I’d be well served if I got a few failures under my belt as well. He wasn’t suggesting I set out to fail. He was suggesting that the best ideas and opportunities are the ones off the beaten path. Finding them requires taking calculated risks and being willing to push boundaries. Failure under the belt showed that you were striving for something.

His advice resonated with me because it was something the previous 37 conversations had helped me realize. When I started the
52 Cups project in July of 2010, I was a soon-to-be college senior, feeling the pressure of finding the perfect job by the time I graduated from college. I figured my first job was the first step of the rest of my life, and if I screwed up, I would let a lot of people down, and ultimately ruin my future. (It feels silly to write that now, but at the time, I believed it.)

Luckily, all the
se coffee conversations have shown me life isn’t black and white; it is a changing shade of grey and a constant challenge to make the most of the opportunities it presents. Figuring life out requires failing a few times. And, with the right mindset and degree of perseverance, failure becomes an opportunity for growth instead of a scary dead end.

I had gone from
fearing failure to accepting that I would fail at some point. Seth took the idea one step further. Not only did he tell me it was all right to fail, he encouraged it. He knows from his experiences that mistakes often breed incredible success. When you aren’t afraid to fail, you open the doors to possibilities.

Failure often occurs where curiosity and courage collide. Something sparks your interest, and you find
courage to explore a new idea. Then, it’s tough to get something perfectly right on the first try, it doesn’t succeed, or at least not the way you expected. You fall.

Then you pick yourself up and move forward, having learned something and grown in the process. You get to approach the same problem from a more-informed perspe
ctive. It’s like learning to ride a bike. No one expects you to do it right on your very first try. You have to fall a couple of times in order to succeed. In fact, the faster you fall, the faster you learn—push a boundary, fail, learn, try a new route, and repeat.

Somewhere along the line, probably in grade school, fai
lure became a bad thing, something to avoid at all cost. But, as Seth said, testing ideas and pushing boundaries—going through a hundred ideas that don’t work—is the best way to find the one (remarkable) idea that does.

Unfortunately, knowing
this doesn’t make failure any easier. Seth told me, even after years of writing best sellers and running successful companies, he still feels the fear of failure. However, he has gotten better at recognizing when the fear is sneaking up on him, which helps him beat it.

Pushing boundaries
is hard for everyone.

* * *

Looking back on the meeting, the advice Seth gave me sounded like a lot of work: fighting resistance, getting rejected, and learning from failure. But when I left our meeting, I was filled with incredible energy. Seth had given me a wonderful gift. He gave me permission to get into trouble, make some mistakes, and get my hands dirty. He knew that curiosity and courage would lead to something great.

I believed him because it was curiosity and courage that had motivated me to volunteer to get off that plane and plan a spontaneous trip to New York City for a chance to meet someone I admired. I could have taken the comfortable route
by staying in my seat and not raising my hand, but I would have missed out on an incredible experience.

Cup 38 and Seth
’s advice reaffirmed my actions and gave me the fuel necessary to keep starting projects, making a ruckus, taking risks, traveling, meeting people, asking questions—and ultimately looking for good ideas.

Of course, in the process, there will be failure
s. But if failures breed the best success, then may be I should be so scared after all.

Colin Wright

Kaffibarin in Reykjavik, Iceland

Americano

When you follow your passion, the future is always exciting.

During
my first couple dozen Cups, I heard the same advice repeatedly: travel while you’re young. I decided it was best to start taking some of the advice I had accrued. I had a bit of money in my savings account from working throughout college, so, after receiving my diploma, I packed my bags and set off for a five-week adventure through Europe, with plans to drink coffee along the way.

My
first international coffee was with Colin Wright, a traveler I found through Twitter.

It happened while I was leaving Iceland’s Blue Lagoon (a recommendation from Cup 21), where I enjoyed sitting in 100-degree water with freezing 30-mph winds blowing around me.

After soaking, I finished eating an Icelandic hot dog (topped with ketchup, sweet mustard, fried onion, raw onion and remolaði) before taking advantage of the free Wi-Fi at the resort.

Earlier, I
’d sent out a tweet looking for someone in Reykjavik interested in having coffee and Colin responded. The power of social media never ceases to amaze me. His twitter bio explained he was an entrepreneur who moved to a new country every four months. I responded to his tweet; I knew we’d have plenty to talk about.

Five hours later
, we were sitting at Kaffibarinn, a trendy spot Colin had picked. When I arrived, it was empty aside from a few locals—too early for a big crowd—but filled with personality; Reykjavik was a city with character.

A few minutes later Colin
walked in, and I introduced myself before we got drinks (coffee for me, green tea for him); we found our way to a table toward the back and started our conversation.

* * *

Colin was born in San Francisco and his family had moved to Missouri when he was ten years old. His aspirations had been to go to college in New York, but he ultimately decided the better option was to attend the school in his backyard at Missouri State University.

He had
an interest in graphic design and Missouri State had a fantastic program that would allow him to work alongside great designers from around the world. When he left with his degree in hand, he headed to Los Angeles to make a name for himself and quickly succeeded. He went from working in a boutique design shop to starting a studio that attracted big-name clients.

Colin
had several career goals, but the biggest was to make enough money to quit his job and travel the world. By age 24, his dream was becoming a reality. Within a year and a half, he realized that he would achieve his financial goal and could begin traveling.

Then one day
, it hit him:
Why wait a year and a half to start pursuing my dream?
He decided to find a way to make international travel happen as soon as possible.

His solution was a unique recipe of entrepreneurship, blogging, and straightforward resourcefulness. The companies he had started in LA were companies he could run from any location with a computer and Internet connection. However, he wanted his travels to be more than just doing the same work from exotic locations. He wanted his travel to have a purpose. He decided he would start a blog and turn the adve
nture into a project. The result was Exile Lifestyle, a blog covering insights gained from both work and travel experiences, along with the results of various lifestyle experiments conducted on the road. The best part was that every four months he would move to a new country determined by the votes of his readers. Since 2009, he had lived in Argentina, New Zealand, and Iceland.

Colin told me the two questions he g
ot most often were: how he managed to keep relationships together since he was always moving, and whether it was hard to leave a place he had grown to love. Both questions had crossed my mind. Four months seemed like just enough time to make a few solid friends and start to feel at home in a place.

Surprisingly, the pattern of starting over hadn
’t bothered him. He said he didn’t like to get complacent, so the constant moving kept him on his toes. He was very up-front with people—especially potential romantic partners—that he was only going to be around for four months. Plus, he could use the power of the Internet to stay in contact with the new friends he’d made. To explain his mentality for leaving the country, he used a Dr. Seuss quote:
Don’t cry because it’s over. Smile because it happened.

While it
was difficult to leave something great behind, achieving his goal necessitated leaving—Colin recognized that. He was in a long-term relationship with a woman he truly loved when he decided to travel. While Colin had realized he needed to travel, his girlfriend realized she wanted to make Seattle home. Early on in their relationship, they had agreed that they never wanted to hold the other person back from their dreams. They wanted the best for each other and decided that in four month’s time, they would break up and start their separate adventures.

Not only did they plan their breakup, they decided to throw a
break-up party. The idea was to get their closest friends together for one last hurrah, to celebrate the wonderful times instead of focusing on the sadness of splitting up. As hard as it was to say goodbye, both Colin and his girlfriend knew bigger things were on the horizon.

* * *

I think the story about the break-up party says a lot about Colin. He is an interesting character: ambitious, unconventional, and obviously not afraid to try new things. His work ethic, creativity, and big-picture thinking have helped him create the life of an international traveler and become an expert at transitions.

Our talk came at a perfect time for me.

I had just graduated from college, which ended an incredible chapter of my life. I’d moved out of East Lansing, a city that had been good to me, and in three- or four days, I would be leaving Iceland for another country—saying goodbye to the new friends I’d just made. In a few more weeks, my European adventure and nomadic lifestyle would likely be replaced with a stationary life of gainful employment.

That’s
a lot of endings. But from Colin’s perspective, it is also a lot of beginnings—chances for change, growth, a new opportunity, and more.

That
is the lesson I will take away from Cup 39: if you vehemently pursue things for which you are passionate, you always have something to which you can look forward. Being excited about what comes next makes it easier to let go of the past and focus on the future.

It also put experiences
into perspective and helps you enjoy the present. Knowing that my conversation with Colin would eventually end—as would my time in Iceland—reminded me to enjoy each moment, so when the time came to say goodbye, I would have good memories to add to my collection, and could look forward to what the next country and conversation would bring.