Do Something GREAT

As far as university marketing slogans go, it’s not bad. I mean it’s better than some others...

I’m headed to Columbus, OH this weekend for the 20 Year Anniversary of the founding of The 8th Floor Improv Comedy Group, the organization me and 5 friends founded while we were attending The Ohio State University.

It’s hard for me to believe we’ll be celebrating 20 years of its existence. First, I can’t believe it’s already been 20 years. It feels like just yesterday (well, more honestly, like 6 or 7 years ago) that my friends and I would spend most of our days playing Halo (the video game, not Beyonce’s song), practicing improv, and occasionally going to class.

Second, none of us ever imagined the group sticking around this long. We assumed that once we all graduated, the group would putter out and be nothing but a fleeting memory that we’d tell our grandchildren about.

“You know, champ, back in my day, we didn’t have no social media. If we wanted someone to entertain us, we had to convince them to try playing a new short-form improv game we made up while practicing in the basement of a residence hall.”

But as I prep myself for a reunion weekend where I’ll get to reconnect with old friends, ask and answer the question, “What have you been up to?” a thousand times, and think, “holy cow I’m old” so many times I grow a few more grey (or gray?) hairs, I keep thinking back to the marketing slogan that Ohio State had while I was there:

“Do Something Great.”

As far as university marketing slogans go, it’s not bad. I mean it’s better than some others (at least according to this site):

• Morehead State University → “Where dreams take root… and grow.”
  The “...” is what sells this one for me, like it was tacked on at the last minute because the slogan naming committee didn’t like the first draft.

• Auburn University → “Because this is Auburn.”
  Why even have a slogan at this point? I would have just gone with, “Because I said so.”

• Washington and Lee University → “Not unmindful of the future.”
  I’m not saying we are mindful of the future, I’m just saying we’re not unmindful, you know?

Each word of the OSU slogan has meaning:

DO - you have to take action, you’re not guaranteed anything just by showing up.

SOMETHING - there’s a lot of possibility. It’s not just finance or medicine or law. That something could be anything (such as improv).

GREAT - whatever the something is, make it meaningful.

What I’ve learned, however, is that in order to “Do Something Great,” you first have to “Do Something.” Greatness (e.g. impact, results, or meaning) doesn’t happen in theory, up in the mind, and it doesn’t happen all at once. It requires action, and oftentimes we don’t know that something might become great until after we’ve started doing it.

As the co-host of the P&G Alumni Learnings from Leaders Podcast, I’ve interviewed over 50 executives from some of the biggest companies, such as Meg Whitman (former CEO of HP), Bracken Darrell (former CEO of Logitech, current CEO of VF Corporation), as well as people like Mark Tatum (NBA Deputy Commissioner & Chief Operating Officer) and Aftab Pureval (Mayor of Cincinnati).

In many of these conversations, I’ve asked these leaders if this was the career or success they imagined when they were first starting out.

Just about every person has said no, that it’s beyond what they even knew was possible.

How about you?

Why? Why not? (let me know in the comments)

In the early days of The 8th Floor, we joked about how crazy it would be if the group got to a 5-year anniversary. I’m not sure any of us (except for Nate) really thought we’d get to 20 years and beyond (assuming the whole thing doesn’t implode this weekend).

But even beyond The 8th Floor, my life is very different than what I could have imagined.

If you had asked 18 year-old me what my adult life would look like, I would have told you: I’d be a middle manager at P&G (or senior leader at a smaller company), living in Cincinnati, raising a family, playing in a soccer league, sporting frosted tips, and taking care of my Tamagotchi… (it was the early 2000s after all).

I never would have imagined I’d be running my own company, definitely not on the subject of humor, nor would I imagine I would be living outside of the US, married to a German (hi Pretzel), with an almost passable knowledge of Spanish (estoy trabajando en ello).

… Yes, I used Google Translate to write that.

While I was optimistic about both The 8th Floor and Humor That Works when I was starting them, I never pictured them becoming what they are today. And frankly, if I did know, I don’t think they would have turned out the same way. There would have been too much pressure, too much emphasis on building something that could survive in 20 years (through a pandemic, social media, and the downfall of MySpace).

Instead, just doing something is what helped us to do something great.

=Drew

PS. I used to make DVDs of some of our shows, including the last show I did (not as an alumni). Here’s the DVD cover. No the actual footage isn’t available and probably never will be, college students doing improv 20 years ago probably isn’t the funniest thing out there.

PPS. Humor Month is coming up, or as some people like to call it, April. To celebrate, we are bringing back the Humor Awards! If you know anyone who has done something GREAT, put their names down in the comment (alongside with WHY you think they deserve to be taken in consideration.)