A lot of my career could probably be summed up as trying things I had absolutely no business doing, stumbling through them, and learning some new skills along the way.
In the fall of 2002, during my freshman year at Wake Forest, I found myself standing in front of a bulletin board covered in flyers for club sports.
I was looking for a ski team. I'd grown up ski racing in the Berkshires of western Massachusetts. Skiing was a huge part of my life.
There was just one problem. Wake Forest is in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Not exactly a skiing destination. And there was no ski team.
But I knew Duke had one. UVA had one too. So I thought, "Well, why not us?"
Of course, that was immediately followed by the realization that if I wanted a ski team, I was probably going to have to start one myself.
And so I did.
With absolutely no idea what I was doing, I chartered Wake Forest's first club ski team, recruited members, coached them, and raced alongside them.
That makes it sound a lot more organized than it actually was.
At the time, I didn't think of any of this as leadership. I was just a kid who wanted to keep ski racing. But looking back, I think there's a lesson in that experience that has followed me throughout my career.
You don't have to be the most qualified person in the room to be the person who takes ownership.
In almost every organization I've been part of, there have been gaps where everyone looks around, waiting for someone else to step up.
And often, the person who finally says, "I think we should do this," isn't the person with the most experience or the most impressive credentials. They're just the person who decided to give it a try.