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SAMBA: The Lessons of a Six Month MBA

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Change begins somewhere: Shedding is painful, but necessary.

Two months after I left New York, I spent three days in the woods of North Georgia at the top of a lush and ancient canyon. The early evening air stays relatively quiet until the sun leaves just enough light to cook and gather fire wood. Before you know it, in one simultaneous call of the wild, every cicada this side of the Appalachia joins a chorus that shakes inside you, breaking the silence and uncovering any lie you may have clung to about being alone in the woods.

You are not alone.

Eventually the cicadas will shake their own skin from their body. How often a cicada sheds or molts its external covering depends primarily on growth, and growth is often dependent upon consumption. In other words, the more one feeds, the more one sheds.

Four days into Seth's Alternative MBA (a.k.a., SAMBA), I was crying in front of ten strangers. I shed tears like fat snakes shed scales. The flood gates were opened by a few simple questions-what do you value? -what are your goals?-what makes you happy?

Before New York, I had touched on answering these questions for myself in my application to get into the program. ( I deeply value the arts and building sustainable methods of creative collaboration, patronage, and charity. And music makes me happy.) However, the size of my ambition was matched only by the size of my fear of succeeding in conjunction with the lie that I had become content with never achieving my goals. With every tear in New York, I unmasked another lie masking another fear. And, well, I cried a lot.

There is far too much for me to write in one lens about the Six Month MBA (I haven't gotten to the friendships made!), but this lens captures some beautiful lessons I will take with me for the rest of my life, forever changed.

Setting Goals: Choose Five.

Begin with a set of specific written goals.

Seth made us write them down-our five main goals and our accompanying set of values for the following:
  • social
  • financial
  • family
  • physical
  • mental
  • spiritual
  • career
This was a lesson Seth had learned from studying Zig Ziglar, a powerful mentor to him during his developing years. We wrote for only an hour, and I wrote pages that read like- I want to be a leader in the arts, a celebrated writer and artist, a voice of my region...to be financially secure with a long term foundation for a family...a garden in my backyard...my own backyard and so on. We got down to the basics and went around the table to discuss our findings. It was in fact a process of both self-discovery and dream-recovery.

We wrote together. We listened carefully with open hearts to the stories and emotions that embody 'goals' and asked the hard question-why haven't we achieved them yet?

Zig Stuff

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Photos of the Canyons of North Gerogia

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Understand the reasons behind your ambitions. Why do you want that?

Goals continued...

A goal is a funny thing. You have to dig for them, because the first thing that comes to mind when you ask yourself-"what are my goals?"-may not be the thing you are truly trying to achieve. Often we mistake tactics for goals, leading us down a twisting path leading to little gratifying moments with no clear purpose. Seth taught us that if you think you are at the root of a goal, simply ask yourself "Why?". Why do I want to wake up earlier to read? (tactic). Why do I want to drink more tea and eat for health not hunger alone? (tactic). Why do I want to practice my guitar at least 30 minutes a day? (tactic).

When we understand the reason behind our ambition, our goals change. For example, I love music. I love being a musician and a songwriter. For a long time I thought my goal was - be a remarkable independent songwriter. But in reality, being a remarkable independent songwriter was a tactic toward the greater goal-Create an organization that is a leader in the arts and earns the respect and trust of my community (due date: September 2010).

Be specific. Set a date, write out the benefits, obstacles, skills needed, people who can help, and map it out the step by step.

And for God's sake, read more than you write. Most of the people who can help you find information on the skills you need to acquire can be found in a book or blog. Read them all.

Reading the cave walls.

Be prepared to explore the underworld. Read, read, and write.

In the June 2009 publication of National Geographic, you will find a beautiful article entitled Deep South by Mark Jenkins (photographs by Stephen Alvarez). Boasting over 14,500 known caves, the endless layers of porous limestone of the Tennessee-Alabama-Georgia (TAG) region create "textbook conditions for cave formation".

Recently, I spent twenty minutes or so exploring an unmarked cave in the valley of Cloudland Canyon and stopped when I was barley inside the mouth of it. I knew I was not prepared for the journey. I knew nothing of the obstacles I might face or the skills needed to navigate this massive and muddy underworld. I needed to do some research. With the help of my father, I have begun my education in spelunking to meet one of my favorite goals on my list-Explore the mountains of Peru (due date: September 2015).

Seth didn't teach me how to read, but he did teach me why to read. It is to be expected that an author of many books himself would share his appreciation for the written word through extensive reading assignments. We began with Thirteen Days by Robert F Kennedy. And explored the decision-making process of high ranking government officials during the Cuban Missile Crisis as a way to identify the primary elements of decision making. Later, we ingested classic business books by Zig Ziglar, Chris Anderson's Long Tail, books on Web Analytics, etc. Our reading assignments moved in this pattern-read, review, and share the take-aways with the group and everyone you possibly can.

As a side note, I recently bought a couple of garden books to meet another special goal of mine-Grow a vegetable garden in my backyard (due date: September 2011).

Books by Seth Godin

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Write Daily. Share what you've learned.

keep a sketch book on you at all times...

I keep a note pad in my satchel. It's pages are unlined, because ideas don't have boundaries; aside from legibility, why should notebooks?

I write there everyday, but I have yet to establish a daily routine of writing in public. I wake up every morning with Seth's blog of the day on my Blackberry. I cherish the infrequent moments when I wake up before the blog arrives. I wish I could write in this paragraph-and here is where I write daily-link to blog, but I've learned that a blog is simply a tactic for one of my main goals-Publish a remarkable story and share it ( Due Date: September 2012).

Leaning In

Be brave. Take risks. Do it now.

The most common error in XC ski-skating is to use what's called the "toilet seat" posture. This is how people ski who are being uncommitted and hesitant on their skis....The desired body position is to have the body tilting forward. To flex deeply at the ankles. To have what Norwegian technique video tapes call "good forward fall".

When you are gathered around a small conference table and Seth Godin asks you to write down your goals, the sky is the limit and even the possibility of reaching them feels acutely tangible. But you won't go anywhere unless you truly lean into it. It is a brave and sometimes reckless thing to do, but with everyday that passes since SAMBA, I am willing my body toward a "good forward fall".

I will never forget the high of hearing Seth tell the class (on day one) that I, Emily Boyd, was capable of running a company that could gross fifty million a year. Looking back, the "fifty million" was meaningless, but immediately I knew that Seth believed in me before he knew my middle name or my poverty. A tiny fissure in my molting shell widened and the sound I heard from his mouth was the crackling sound of my hope for myself singing-'I am capable'.

By setting clear goals and developing a scheduled plan of action, I can build an enterprise that changes the world.

And for those of you who need to know, my fifth and final goal is this-Wake up beside my best friend everyday and make breakfast for my family (Due Date: ongoing).

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Emily Kate Boyd is an artist and aspiring entrepreneur living in Atlanta, GA.

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