27 years ago I accidentally ran the hardest, strangest Easter egg hunt my hometown had probably ever seen.
Here’s what happened:
I was 17 and decided with some friends to hold an Easter egg hunt geared to the handful of other teens we hung out with. It was weirdly wholesome of us considering we mostly drank Mad Dog and loitered at Waffle House.
Our commitment level to the egg making was…minimal. We dyed 2 dozen eggs, figuring that’d be plenty for the handful of our friends who showed up the Saturday before Easter.
But we took the hiding VERY seriously. We arrived at Monte Sano park in Huntsville, Alabama, around 8 am and got started.
Monte Sano is a mountaintop park filled with boulders and cliffs and crags, and we scaled around hiding eggs in the hardest-to-reach spots like we were paranoia-deranged lizard people trying to hide our young from eagles.
We climb down, filthy and cracking up at the idea of our friends trying to find these impossibly tucked-away hardboiled death trinkets
We walk back up to the entry area of the park to find our friends, but it’s hard to spot them.
Because it’s so crowded.
There are 100 families. Little kids with baskets everywhere. Someone asks if we know where the egg hunt is. Someone else asks. They keep asking. “Who’s running this Easter egg hunt?”
It’s a good question.
Something dawns on me, so I ask:
“Where did you all hear about an Easter egg hunt here?”
“The news.”
Me: “ABC? Channel 31?”
“Yes!”
Us, collectively: “Fuck.”
(Rewind 24 hours)
The day before, we tell our friends about our dumb egg hunt idea. One older friend says he can’t make it because he’ll be working late. At the TV station. WAAY 31.
That night, the weather man asks if he has Easter plans. “Just going to an egg hunt at Monte Sano in the morning.”
The weather man, understandably, makes a logical assumption. He announces live on TV that the Saturday weather will be great.
For the egg hunt. At Monte Sano.
Back to the present. 100 families. At our egg hunt designed for bouldering teen dirtbags. We decide to just do it.
“Hello,” I announce. “Thank you for coming to…our egg hunt.”
“Are you from a church?” one parent asks.
Me, in a Tool shirt: “Not exactly.”
“This is,” I tell them, “a different kind of egg hunt. Finding even one is a huge victory. Like, truly a big deal. Seriously, kids, even seeing one from a distance is a huge win.”
“Happy hunting, and remember, uh, expectations low.”
In fairness, they seemed to have a good time. Most kids just rolled with the 5-star difficulty theme. Parents were confused, but at least their kids were out of the house.
One little girl had 6 eggs in her basket by the end. That kid terrified me.
So that’s how a random idea for our friends turned into Huntsville’s weirdest, hardest, most poorly organized but well publicized egg hunt.
No one died, and a good time was had by some.
Late but important addendum from a friend who was there
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As you succeed, resist the urge to defend a system just because you managed to endure it. Raise hell on the way up, then burn down toxic structures from the inside.
The greatest responsibility of leadership is to tear down obstacles that keep future (and current) generations from achieving their potential. Imagine how much more people could accomplish without the emotional weight of repressive systems.
Some might argue that overcoming challenges builds character. OK, sure, but there will still be plenty of challenges, and they’ll be the creative problem-solving kind, not the kind that exist solely to make an industry less accessible.
When you first start offering younger folks mentorship, your instinct is to tell them what to do—basically creating shortcuts to get where you got, only faster.
But they’re on their own path, and what you consider focused guidance can end up creating doubt or uncertainty.
Rushing to the advice phase is a well-intentioned, easy mistake to make. First you really have to listen and recognize their goals and values are different from yours. More importantly their personalities are different. They’ll succeed through different approaches than you did.
When mentor and mentee are too similar, you reinforce each other’s habits, good or bad, but you don’t really add any new ways of thinking. And you create 1:1 expectations that their career will grow like yours did. There’s a lot of potential for bitterness in that setup.
Here's a weird thought experiment I tend to keep in the back of my mind: I call it The Lifeboat.
I suppose the whole idea might sound a bit bleak, but for me it's about appreciation. Here's how it works:
If the company you work for were to go belly-up overnight and everyone had to leave, which coworkers would you take in your "lifeboat" to sail away and start something new together?
I don't think about this in terms of favoritism or cliques or anything. It's just about "if I had to start over right now, which of these folks would I trust to help me get a new project off the ground?"
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(Sorry, I’ll need a brief thread...)
When we come into the work world, we’re told to respect expertise. Which makes sense, but it also implies expertise is something you either have or don’t have. That’s simply not true.
Expertise is a journey you’re always on. It’s not a fixed point. You don’t cross a line one day and, boom, you’re an expert!
We're 182 episodes into the @Adweek podcast (if you count bonus eps), which feels like an appropriately arbitrary moment to share a thread of a few things I've learned about #podcasting over the past 4 years. Here we go:
1. Your first episodes are going to suck. Sure, do everything you can to get your quality as high as possible, but be zen about the fact you're only going to get better and you're learning as you go. Otherwise you'll never launch it.
2. Record 3 or so eps before you begin promoting it beyond your closest friends. That'll give you time to iron out major issues and get closer to finding your stride. Plus it's nice for fans to have a bit to dig into if they like it.