INSPIRATION
Every fall I take a cabin trip with my friends. It's an annual reset and recharge, and it lands in September on purpose. This time I got to stop by and see my mom on the way down.
Here's what I've figured out about the last quarter of the year. Everybody starts sprinting October 1. New goals, new energy, big finish, let's go. And a whole lot of us hit that line running on whatever we had left over from August. Fueling for Q4 doesn't start the day before Q4.
So how are you fueling this month to get ready for the last quarter of the year? Not what your goals are. What's actually going in the tank.
For me, a good bit of it has been A Different World. The reboot launches this month on Netflix, so I've been going back through the show these past couple of weeks, and it has turned into the most fun thing me and my mom look forward to talking about every evening. She watched it when it was on. I'm just now getting to it (don't roast me). We've spent a lot of time comparing her time (late 80s) to mine.
That show means something to our community that's hard to explain to anybody who didn't grow up around it. It told a whole generation of Black kids that college was theirs to have, and it did it while going straight at heavy topics most sitcoms in that era wouldn't touch. It also got the work right.
The way the staff at Hillman showed up for those students is the closest thing I've ever seen on television to what people at HBCUs actually do all day.
So that's my September. A cabin, my friends, my mom, and a show I'm embarrassingly late to. That's what's going in the tank.
COLLABORATION
Watching it is what made me send a text.
I got seven people who all met at the same HBCU back on a call. Different states, different ways of finding out places like that even existed. We got into who reached out to us in the first place, why you invest in somebody who isn't fully packaged yet, and what it actually costs to be the staff member who's also the ride home. We didn't get through half of it.
Here's the trailer. The full episode drops next Sunday.
EXECUTION
Your 1% this week. Put one thing on the calendar between now and September 30 that exists only to fill your tank. Not a workout you already do, and not something you can talk yourself into calling work. A trip, a weekend, one Saturday where the phone stays face down.
Then hit reply and tell me what it is. I want to know what y'all are doing to get ready.
PASS IT ON
Forward this to the friend who's already talking about how crazy their fall is about to be.
THE EXTRA
The new A Different World trailer is out. Watch it with whoever put you on the first one. → Netflix trailer
— DéRecco
The Invisible Interview · The Invisible Score · The TEF Show
