Be Fearless

5 Principles for a Life of Breakthroughs and Purpose

Jean Case

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781501196362
• Topic: Développement personnel
• Subtopic: Réussite personnelle

Be Fearless is researched-based call to action for those seeking to live extraordinary lives and bring about transformational change. LOS ANGELES TIMES BESTSELLER * NATIONAL BESTSELLER Weaving together storytelling, practical tips and inspiration, the book will teach you how to put the five fearless principles to work so that you too can spark the sorts of remarkable breakthroughs that can impact the world. Philanthropist, investor, and technology pioneer Jean Case brings to life the five Be Fearless principles common to the people and organizations that bring about transformational change.When National Geographic Chairman Jean Case set out to investigate the core qualities of great change makers, past and present, from inventors to revolutionaries, she found five surprising traits they all had in common. These weren't wealth, privilege, or even genius. What all of these exceptional men and women shared was that they had chosen to make a "big bet, " take bold risks, learn from their failures, reach beyond their bubbles, and let urgency conquer fear.Throughout Be Fearless, Jean vividly illustrates these principles through storytelling—from her own transformational life experiences, to Jane Goodall's remarkable breakthroughs in understanding and protecting chimpanzees, to celebrity chef José Andrés' decision to be a "first responder" and take his kitchen to the sites of devastating hurricanes to feed the hungry, to Madame C.J. Walker's vision to build a hair care empire that would employ thousands across the country, and more. She shares new insights to stories you might think you know—like Airbnb's tale of starting from scratch to transform the hospitality industry, to John F. Kennedy's history-making moonshot—and gems from changemakers you've never heard of. Be Fearless features a compelling foreword from Jane Goodall saying "there is no time in history when it has been more important to Be Fearless" and a new afterword with stories of people inspired to take action after reading the book.

PART ONE

MAKE A BIG BET

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Start right where you are

Be audacious

Burst through assumptions

Peek around corners

Now go, make your Big Bet

ONE

START RIGHT WHERE YOU ARE

On an afternoon in 2005, I sat in the waiting room of Dr. Barbara Van Dahlen’s counseling office, fidgeting as the minutes ticked by. I had arrived early for my meeting with Barbara, a friend and family counselor with a kind heart and a reputation for excellence. My curiosity had been piqued when I’d seen her days earlier at an event and she’d asked if I might be willing to meet. “I have an idea,” she’d said, “and I’d love to run it by you and see what you think.” So there I sat, wondering what she might want to discuss.

Soon the door opened and Barbara warmly welcomed me into her office. “I have a problem,” she started off. “And others in my profession are seeing the same thing.” Week after week, she was getting calls for counseling services from men and women in the military and their families. With the war on terror raging in Afghanistan and Iraq, nearly 200,000 service personnel had been called to active duty, with many serving multiple tours. Barbara described to me the traumatic reality of life in such places. That trauma followed the soldiers home; there was a growing post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) crisis. And the stress of multiple tours of duty had taken a real toll on many military families. Unfortunately, she told me, the Department of Veterans Affairs was overwhelmed by the scope of the problem. It couldn’t keep up with the demand for mental health services, leaving too many soldiers and their families without the resources they needed.

She told me that she’d personally taken on a few families pro bono and had convinced other colleagues to do the same. Giving just an hour a week of pro bono therapy wasn’t too much of a hardship on any one doctor, and most of the doctors she’d talked to were happy to do their small part to help those on the front lines.

“So here’s my idea,” Barbara said. “I want to create a nationwide network of doctors and other caregivers who would agree to give an hour a week. If we can get enough of them to commit, we can help close the gap in mental health services for military families.”

I sat absorbing what she was proposing before peppering her with questions about how she might go about setting up this national network, what kind of support she would need, and what kind of time frame was feasible. Finally, I asked the hardest question: Why did she, as a sole practitioner with no experience in organization building, think she could pull this off?

“Because the need is urgent, families are suffering, and I’m passionate about bringing a solution,” she replied without hesitation.

Barbara’s Big Bet was that she would be able to create a large enough network of doctors and caregivers—along with military, political, and private sector leaders—to be of assistance, and that her hook—“Give an Hour”—would appeal to people who wanted to make a difference but had limited time. I believed in Barbara’s vision, and I left her office excited to be of help as she took the idea forward. It wasn’t long before Give an Hour was born.

In the years since I sat in Barbara’s office, thousands of providers across the country have answered her call. Nearly a quarter of a million hours have been donated by her network of licensed care providers, the equivalent of almost $25 million in counseling services—all free. In 2012, Time magazine named Barbara among the 100 Most Influential People in the World, and her organization has been given four stars, the highest ranking, by Charity Navigator, the nation’s largest evaluator of charities, exceeding industry standards.

And Barbara hasn’t stopped there. She has become a recognized leader in mental health, spearheading efforts to reduce the stigma and engaging high-profile entertainers to help carry her message and build an even broader movement. A documentary featuring her work aired on PBS in late 2017.

Barbara’s story is a remarkable testament to what one individual can do to change the world. With no background in organization building, with no staff to support her, and without the funds and the network she knew she’d need, she made a Big Bet and took it one step at a time. In starting right where she was—one counselor giving an hour a week—she showed others that they could do the same. She asked only for the smallest commitment, and the enthusiastic response was a tribute to the soundness of her plan.

The challenge to start right where you are is the great equalizer. For the most part, the public doesn’t hear about Big Bets until their results are out in the world, proven and successful. But if we could peek back to the beginning, we’d often find ourselves amazed by the simplicity of their origins. This should be inspiring for those of us who want to make a difference but feel thwarted by a lack of experience or resources.

This applies to innovation and invention as well. In America, we think of an innovator as that lone guy tinkering in a garage who has an “aha!” moment. And while that might make for good storytelling, the truth is that it’s very seldom how breakthroughs come to be. Time and time again, they come from people living with real frustrations, who get to a point where they realize, “There has to be a better way.” So they set out to create one. Take, for instance, “newfangled” ideas like dishwashers, home security devices, and windshield wipers—none invented by lone guys in garages. In fact, all were invented by women.

A striking example of this dynamic came more than one hundred years ago when an extraordinarily successful female entrepreneur built an enterprise, also based on a problem that needed solving. That woman was Madam C.J. Walker, the daughter of slaves, who had the courage and initiative to launch her entrepreneurial dream and make a difference in spite of the extreme hardship of her life. The story of her Big Bet is so compelling that in 2018 LeBron James’s production company announced plans to create a limited series about her, starring Oscar winner Octavia Spencer.

We can only imagine the level of challenge Walker experienced in her early years. She was born Sarah Breedlove in 1867, just after the Civil War, on a plantation in Louisiana, where her parents and all of her siblings had been slaves. Although she was free, her early life was marked by tragedy and struggle. She lost both parents by the age of seven and was sent to live with her sister and her husband in Mississippi, who hired her out as domestic help when she was only ten. At fourteen she married in order to flee their abusive home. By age seventeen she was a mother, and she was widowed at twenty. She worked as a washerwoman for $1.50 a week, and there was little indication that her life would take such a dramatic turn. She did not live in a climate like today’s where entrepreneurial dreams can often come true. Opportunity seemed out of reach for a poor woman with no resources. But as she would later say, “I got my start by giving myself a start.”

Like many Big Bets, Breedlove’s originated in an effort to solve a personal problem—her hair was falling out, and she could find no products on the market to address her condition. At the time, scalp disease and subsequent baldness were common for black women, largely due to harsh chemicals used for washing. Rather than accept her plight, she set out to experiment with her own homemade concoctions, aided by advice from her barber brothers. She adopted a regimen of daily scalp washing with a hair solution she had created. With her daily use of her new formula, her hair grew back, and she began to look at ways her unique formula could help other women.

When Breedlove married journalist Charles Joseph Walker, becoming known as Madam C.J. Walker, she took her “Madam Walker’s Wonderful Hair Grower” product and “Walker System” and began going door to door, teaching women about hair treatment and the use of her product. Along with her husband, she set out across the country to build new markets for her growing hair-care business. In the process, her effort became so much more than selling a product. By training and recruiting large numbers of young black women across the country as a sales force—a remarkable feat early in the twentieth century—she empowered and generated income for women who themselves had few opportunities. She created the Madam C.J. Walker Hair Culturists Union, with dues of twenty-five cents per month, to provide business and educational opportunities, as well as life insurance and other benefits. She encouraged this network of young entrepreneurs to practice philanthropy in their communities, and at her annual convention that brought them together, she provided special recognition for those who’d been most generous in their communities back home. “I am not satisfied in making money for myself,” she said. “I endeavor to provide employment to hundreds of women of my race.”

Madam Walker only lived to the age of fifty-one, and in the final decade of her life she became a popular motivational speaker, millionaire, and philanthropist. “I had to make my own living and my own opportunity,” she told her audiences. “But I made it! Don’t sit down and wait for the opportunities to come. Get up and make them.” Madam Walker did more than create a product. She would say that her Big Bet was the opportunity she created for others.

“I got my start by giving myself a start.”

—MADAM C.J. WALKER

Sometimes starting where you are means already having a core of knowledge and experience, as Barbara Van Dahlen did. But sometimes, in this era of disruption, Big Bets can come from people who arrived at their inventions without preconceived notions or any experience at all.

In the late 1990s, Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia, recent graduates of the Rhode Island School of Design, struck out for San Francisco, where so many young professionals were flocking to at the time. But soon enough, the high cost of living had them struggling to pay the rent. They knew they needed to find a way to get some extra income—and fast. At about the same time, they heard grumblings that a big design conference coming to the city had bought out nearly all the nearby hotel rooms, leaving many attendees without a place to stay. What if, they asked themselves, we rent out some space in our apartment? They created a simple website with pictures of their loft and the three air mattresses they had purchased to “rent out.” Renters were promised a home-cooked breakfast as part of the deal. It didn’t take long to get the first booking—a recent graduate from Arizona State University desperate for an affordable place to stay. (Brian and Joe charged eighty dollars per mattress.) Soon two other conference attendees confirmed their reservations. Airbnb was born.

The small success of their venture motivated Brian and Joe to turn the idea into something more permanent. They boldly began to solicit investors, most of whom thought the idea of staying in the home of a stranger was crazy. Their timing wasn’t so great either. The looming financial crisis was dampening investors’ appetite for backing untested ideas.

To keep their endeavor afloat, Brian and Joe devised a clever twist on the breakfast part of the plan. Trying to get a foothold in Denver, which was hosting the 2008 Democratic National Convention, they had the idea to market signature cereal boxes as a way to create buzz and extra revenue around the convention, which they later duplicated at the Republican Convention in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Obama O’s and Cap’n McCain cereals became a hit, providing $30,000 of much-needed income.

In January 2009, Airbnb was accepted into the competitive Y Combinator accelerator program for start-ups, which came with a $20,000 investment from Y Combinator’s cofounder Paul Graham. Graham hadn’t been too impressed with the idea of someone paying to sleep on an air mattress on a stranger’s floor. But as the two young entrepreneurs prepared to leave their first interview with him, Joe gave Graham a box of Obama O’s. “Wow,” said Graham. “You guys are like cockroaches. You just won’t die. If you can convince people to pay forty dollars for a box of cereal, you can probably convince them to pay to sleep on each other’s air mattresses.” The cereal sealed the deal.

Airbnb didn’t hire a big team, or spend big money on marketing and advertising. In effect, Brian and Joe asked: What is the least amount of time or effort we can spend on an experiment to determine if this idea will fly? They learned to stay nimble and to identify opportunities to keep afloat until they were established.

“One of my biggest strengths was precisely how little I knew.”

—BRIAN CHESKY

The growth process wasn’t without problems. When you introduce a new concept, some people are bound to resist. There was intense lobbying from the hotel industry. Some communities and apartment buildings blocked owners from renting their spaces with Airbnb, and people worried about strangers trashing their homes. But the idea caught on because it touched on something travelers were looking for. It wasn’t just a matter of price. It was the sense of belonging somewhere, of staying in a place that felt more welcoming than a sterile hotel room. It also provided homeowners grappling with high property taxes and empty nests an easy way of earning income. Today the company operates in more than 80,000 cities and 191 countries. Over half a million people stay in one of Airbnb’s more than 3 million listings every day.

• • •

So, you see, anyone can make a Big Bet, and getting started often begins with a simple question: “Why not me?” Imagine being a college student. (Maybe you are one and don’t have to imagine.) Your daily life is filled with classes and activities, family and friends. What would compel you to also take on a project such as ending hunger on college campuses? That’s what UCLA students Rachel Sumekh and Bryan Pezeshki did. Their national nonprofit organization, Swipe Out Hunger, began in 2010 as a grassroots initiative after Bryan noticed a call for food donations and asked some friends, “Who wants to help?” When Rachel responded, she was disturbed to find that she was the only one. The following Saturday, she and Bryan spent five hours moving donated food across the campus for distribution to students who couldn’t afford to eat.

The problem they set out to tackle wasn’t a new one, but it certainly went unacknowledged for years. While we don’t think of students on college campuses going hungry, my own experience is a personal testament to this. Although I was a recipient of financial aid during my college years, the aid did not cover a meal plan. With the meager amount of money I had earned mostly going to books and other extra costs not covered by financial aid, I often had to skip meals because I simply didn’t have the funds. I was fortunate because close family friends who lived nearby invited me to dinner routinely and often sent me back to my dorm with leftovers for lunch the next day. (I grow a bit teary as I reflect on this—how lucky I was to have so many in my life whose generosity and loving care were transformative in big ways and small.)

Today an estimated one in seven college students nationwide is considered so “food insecure” they’ve visited a food bank; in some states, that number rises to one in four. Which is where Swipe Out Hunger comes in. Rachel and Bryan’s effort started with a sign, to-go boxes, and some encouragement to fellow students to collect extra food. But it wasn’t long before they came up against dining hall management, which felt threatened by what they considered competition. One dining manager even smashed Rachel’s boxes and shouted, “Get this program the hell off my campus.”

It was clear that Swipe Out Hunger needed another way forward, which was when Rachel and Bryan set their sights on the college meal plan. At many schools, it’s easy enough for those parents who can afford it to load money onto what’s a bit like an ATM card for food each September, which students can swipe each time they enjoy an on-campus meal. It’s not uncommon to end up with money left on the card at the end of the year, and most schools don’t allow that balance to roll over to the following year.

Unused meal plan credits can reach hundreds of thousands of dollars at bigger universities. What if, Rachel wondered, students could “swipe” to donate unused meal credits to students in need? It was a brilliant idea—and so simple—and should have been widely embraced. But faced with the loss of so much revenue, UCLA didn’t make it easy. As Rachel later said: “We felt like kids breaking the rules.” The founders persisted, however, and by 2012 Swipe Out Hunger had achieved such acclaim that their efforts were recognized by the White House, who named the student leaders Champions for Change. President Barack Obama himself congratulated the fifteen students who came from California to receive the honor.

After graduation, the students went their separate ways, Rachel into social work. But before long, the Swipe Out Hunger team, which had always been staffed by volu...