I have always been a very observant person. Every since I was a kid, I enjoyed connecting concepts that I saw from different settings in my life — home, school, church, etc — and applying them to new surroundings. This skill of identifying concepts that would make life more relatable to me or others only got amplified when I started to really get into television. My favorite TV show as a kid who grew up in a primarily African-American neighborhood in Little Rock was Seinfeld. I remember I was about 11 years old at a summer program at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock and I was talking to a friend about one of my favorite cartoons at the time, Duckman. The friend then suggested if I like that show, I will love Seinfeld. My friend told me the time it came on and I eagerly waited for this recommendation that was apparently on par with Duckman. Now he didn’t tell me his recommendation was not a cartoon so it took me a couple of days to get into it. But as I watched this New York 30-something comedian navigate through a “show about nothing,” I discovered we had a similar trait. Jerry and I loved to draw from random situations in our lives to show common observations or truths in life. I thus I began to learn the language that I spoke with fluency for a decade and a half — sarcasm.
My parents obviously loved the fact that I started to make more sarcastic jokes and observations about daily acts of life. One that I really love to draw from was do everything drama shows. You remember those shows that were typically on the USA or the Family Channel, where the protagonist is put in impossible situations where they have limited experience but somehow are able to save the day with a rubber band, gum and safety pin (yes looking at you McGyver, which also was my Dad’s favorite show growing up). But, I found the most ludicrous of these shows was NBC’s “The Pretender.” The show’s premise was literally “A specially gifted man, with the ability to instantly master any skill, escapes from a secret agency and travels the country taking on different jobs and helping strangers.” After hearing this ridiculous premise, I began to tell my dad that he should have been cast as the pretender since he always had different hobbies or had anecdotes that described experiences in life where he was working in industries that weren’t computer programming or pastoral teaching. So the running joke whenever he began one of his stories or gave a fully confident “Dad answer” in a field that wasn’t his day job, I always said: “Dad’s pitching us another Pretender episode script!”
Now I find myself in Pretender plots. The last three years after graduating business school have not been the straight or semi-straight path I envisioned for myself. But through collaborating with friends, colleagues, strangers, leveraging online learning, social media influencers and maintaining my desire to pay it forward — I’ve started pretending what life would be like as a VC, blogger, and startup advisor by doing the job before I have it. Slowly but surely some things are starting to blossom and I look forward to sharing opportunities that have come up like:
Providing guidance on fundraising and business development to some amazing startups as the first advisor
Serving as an Investor-In-Residence for a micro-VC fund
Traveling as a tech blogger to Europe to cover up incoming hubs of innovation
More (detailed blog posts) to come but I just want to encourage each of you to keep pretending until you find yourself in that dream situation. This is something I’m learning every day.
Have a great week!
Earnest Sweat is a Startup Adviser that specializes in mentoring startups within the fin tech, ed tech, and real estate tech sectors. If you have any questions, comments or requests please connect with Earnest through LinkedIn, Twitter, or AngelList.
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