6:43pm. My usual return-to-home ritual is as follows: empty the pockets, unwrap the scarf, unzip the boots, toss my phone to the gray couch, turn on the kitchen lights, be silent. My favorite part of this routine is the silence. Probably, for the first time that day, it will be when I’m farthest from my phone.
So, when this October 18 routine was interrupted by an agitating glow across my half-lit apartment, I had to follow my impulse. Hey, it could’ve been a professor cancelling class, right?
Not this time. It was from an old friend back in high school who moved to Europe. The first thing I thought was, “We’re not at the age where you start learning weird sh*t about people from high school”.
I had no idea what she was talking about. The second text was an LA Times article about a motorcycle crash.
There’s exactly one person in my world who knew how to ride and could’ve been on a motorcycle: Seb. My best friend who loved adrenaline more than me.
A hit-and-run crash pronounced him dead at the scene.
Let me tell you a little (and a lot) about my best friend, Seb:
He is an encyclopedia on cars and has raced them since he was 3
He has raging ADHD and is addicted to sugar
He knows, and hates, that I’m always right
The first thing he’ll tell you about me is I’m scary. Because in 7th grade we got into a fight that would reset our friendship (and make me hold a grudge for 2 years until he apologized repeatedly) over a guy I liked. The second thing he’ll tell you is I was basically his ghostwriter for English class. If there was ONE subject Seb knew it was cars. But rarely anything else.
He struggled in “traditional” schooling. He knew this. The thought of MORE traditional education made him depressed. But for his parents, especially the one who attended USC, wanted him to follow in the same footsteps.
Like most high schoolers in 2020, an uncertain future coupled with parental expectations would send Seb into a spiral about his next phase of life. One path was USC and staying home in Los Angeles. The second was Tuner Car School in Austin, Texas. One promised a future of generally knowing business, while the other would make him a mechanic for race cars.
This is the same decision every founder faces at some point. Either playing it safe and following what people say is “right”, or betting on yourself and vision to bring it into reality.
Which do you think he wanted? The next year would be filled with a series of long, long conversations between him and I about making this decision.
And one phrase that would come back and haunt me was when I said, “you have such a wealth of knowledge about an extremely specific thing (cars), you are doing a disservice to the world by not sharing and doing what you know and love”
He ended up at Turner a year later.
A few weeks before October 18, we called to plan Thanksgiving break…and to mention his girlfriend (that he knew I didn’t like) cheated on him.
“Goddamn it, Bella. You were right again. How are you always right? Is there anything else I need to know?”
I told him to be careful, because the full moon was in a bad position for his chart. Something we always joked about because I was super into astrology in middle school. I told him to stay off the motorcycle (he was planning on selling it) and I’d see him at Thanksgiving.
That was supposed to be a month away.
Something you, as a reader, should know is that in the span of 2 years, I met death 6 times.
Grandpa P.
Papa John
Grandma P.
Jack
Simba
Seb.
My relationship to death, before Seb, was honestly pretty objective. Life isn’t forever, anything can happen, it ends. And I was okay with that. But the 6th meeting, after Seb, made everything darker.
“Sure, anything can happen…anything… could… happen… in one second”
It wasn’t old age or being sick. It was, plainly, bad luck.
When I reeled back our last conversation, looked through our 10-year-long meme sharing, and saved Snapchat messages, I couldn’t help but wonder if he was upset, somewhere out there, as a ghost perhaps? I definitely think I would be.
And then another piece of our last conversation hit me: he wanted my opinion on how to better manage his car garage and be a better salesman (his Dodge Challenger was a featured car in the LA Car Show for the upcoming year).
Suddenly, the kid I met in sixth grade had gotten his dream.
Go to car school
Work on race cars
Own a garage
Be in the LA Car Show
Join a racing group
He didn’t even realize it. He told me he was the happiest he has ever been on our last call. And then went out doing exactly what he came into this world doing: racing. One could say he feverishly shared and did what he knew and loved.
In that same conversation, I told him I had been struggling figuring out my career. My options, like his, were tied between staying safe or risking it for what I love: starting a business. So, he threw my own advice at me, “You are literally my go-to business woman. Whenever I don’t know how to say something, you help me figure it out. You love that, and you talk about it all the time. Do and share what you know and love”
After he died, I realized I wasn’t living my own advice.
And I stopped. I stopped posting. I stopped seeing people. I pushed back my graduation by a year. And I sat with myself to question what I really wanted to do. If it all can end in a blink, what will I have done? And do I love what that is?
The answer was no. I had spent the last 4 years building things for other people and institutions. And I was about to do the same thing post-graduation: Maximize shareholder value. Safe salaries. Impressive titles. Build other people’s systems.
I was avoiding starting my own company because I was scared. Scared of what I’d look like to everyone. Scared that, for the first time, I wouldn’t be able to explain myself to anyone. Plainly, I needed to deal with being misunderstood.
When I took this 1.5 year break, I didn’t know what would come next or for how long. I just wanted to be reintroduced to myself. And when I did that, I doubled down on what I was good at: helping founders figure out what they're trying to say. From here, I started my media company… That’s how I met my current boss.
If Seb hadn’t followed what he loved, he would’ve died miserable and too short on time to achieve his dreams. But he did. And he was one of the happiest people I knew who ended up with every goal he wanted. He died extremely happy.
And if you really know Seb, he’s laughing with us right now about all of this. It’s tragically perfect how on brand this is for him.
I wish I could tell you there’s a cure for grief. There’s not. Or that it will get better over time. It won’t. And to quote a drunk man from Boston I met outside of Anchovies,
“Grief is like a shattered piece of glass pierced through your heart. You bleed out. You want to take it out. But then you realize if you take it out, you’ll lose the glass forever. So instead, you let it heal over. And every once in a while it’ll sting again, but at least you know its still part of you”
Holy sh*t that was deep for my Friday night.
But it’s true. My piece of glass is hearing an engine roar. Especially when they annoyingly rev…he was kinda like that sometimes.
Every time I’m reminded of our shared mantra, “do and share what you know and love”.
Business school doesn’t teach you “Grief and Growth Strategies”. It teaches you sales pitches, talking to customers, and projecting financials. All of which do not involve talking about death (because that’s the end of your returns, right?)
Here's what business school should add: death can stop you in your tracks while you’re still alive. It can stop your business. Most importantly, it forces you to look at what would happen if you weren’t here.
If you're a founder, or thinking about becoming one, the only question that matters is: Are you pursuing what YOU know and love, or what you think you're supposed to do?
The difference between them is the difference between Seb's life and the one he would've hated.
Do and share what you know and love. That's it. That's the whole thing.
BTW Seb, you’re only getting this once from me and you’re lucky it’s in writing, but yes, you are right. I should’ve been doing this a long time ago.
Comments
Nothing yet. Say the first thing.
Sign in to join the conversation.