The Future Is Bright. There Is Also A Dimmer Switch.
What nobody tells students about the part they control
I toured with the UNCF speaking to college students about entrepreneurship and building businesses. This is the talk that came out of those rooms.
Everybody tells students the future is bright. They are right, and the opportunity in front of this generation is genuinely enormous. Nobody mentions the second half: the switch is on the wall in your room, it has a dial rather than an on and off, and you are the only person who can reach it.
Four ways the dial turns down
Comparison. It feels like ambition and functions like anesthesia. Watching other people's progress produces the sensation of effort without any of the effort.
Waiting for a credential. Name who would grant you permission to start. It is usually nobody, and the waiting is the only thing between you and beginning.
Protecting the plan instead of testing it. An untested plan is a wish you are defending. Show it to somebody who might tell you it is wrong.
A room full of people who never push you. You will average the five people you spend the most time with. That is not a motivational slogan, it is an observation about how standards work.
A plan versus a wish
A plan has a next action, a date, and someone who knows about it. A wish has none of those three.
Tell me your next action and when. If you cannot, you have a wish, and the fix is smaller than you think: pick the action, pick the day, tell one person.
Build with what you actually have
Students consistently underestimate their own resources. You have time you will never have this much of again. You have a network nobody has monetized. You have tolerance for looking foolish, which decreases sharply with age. And you have faculty and alumni who answer email from students at a rate that would shock you, because almost nobody asks.
That last asymmetry disappears the moment you graduate. Use it now.
My own version
I said yes to money before I understood the work. I quoted a client three weeks on a project that took seven months, because I was excited about the first big check and had not done the research.
You will get that chance soon. Handle it better than I did, and if you do not, learn the specific lesson rather than the general one that you are not capable. The general one is wrong.
The close
The future is bright. The dial is in your room. Nobody else can reach it, and nobody else is coming to turn it up.
This is my campus keynote The Future Is Bright, But There Is A Dimmer Switch Included.