Five years ago, a former co-worker and I had an idea to start a non-profit in Nashville, Tennessee with the aim of supporting our beloved graduating seniors (he was a principal and I was the college counselor) into and through college. As part of the entrepreneurial process, we got hooked up with the Nashville Entrepreneur Center, which helps startups get off the ground through offering training, networking, and co-working space. One of the supports on offer at the time was the opportunity to meet with big time professionals in the Nashville area who had signed up to give back through mentoring sessions. For one of these sessions, we requested to meet with Henry Hicks, who at the time was CEO of the yet to open National Museum of African American Music, a MASSIVE project with a giant spotlight on it. We met Henry at some cool old Nashville bar, the kind of place you imagine when hear “back room deals” and where decision makers meet. I was grossly out of place in this environment, but also knew this meeting was crucial and I needed to keep my shit together in front of this guy.
Henry was extremely generous with his time. He stayed with us for an hour while we told him our hopes, dreams, and fears of failure. I couldn’t tell you what most of the hour of conversation consisted of, but I will never forget one part of the conversation, when Henry set down his cocktail and looked us both in the eye (he had that power certain people do, to instantly demand attention with the slightest of gestures). Henry went into a story about a speech he had given the previous week in which he guaranteed a crowd that the museum would open on time, despite the numerous types of setbacks you’d expect on a project as significant as the Museum. He then shared he had no idea if the museum would open. I was floored. How could this man lie to a crowd invested in something so culturally significant (and not to mention, expensive)? Then, he gave us the most valuable advice we received during our entrepreneurial journey: You have to make your success inevitable. For everyone.
What Henry was doing when he told that crowd the doors would open was make the museum’s success inevitable. I will never forget that advice, both for what it did for our careers, and for how it’s moved in and out of my life at unexpected moments. Most recently, I remembered Harry’s words on a walk around campus and wondered what makes some students feel like their success in college was inevitable and others that their failure was inevitable. What created a sense of successful inevitability for me, a first generation college student, but not for others? Is there a way to increase the inevitability of success for more college students?
