Free The Promise of a Pencil: How an Ordinary Person Can Create Extraordinary Change by Adam Braun Page B

quickly crunch numbers and present effectively in front of others. I could feel my old sense of self start to reemerge. My work wasn’t perfectly aligned with my passion yet, but I now knew that when an opportunity presented itself, I would seize it without hesitation.

Mantra 8

EMBRACE THE LIGHTNING MOMENTS
    J ust as I started to settle into the rhythm of New York City living, I found out that I was nearly eligible to apply for the Bain “externship,” a six-month leave where I could work at a company of my choice and then return to the security of my job at Bain. I wouldn’t be an official Bain employee during my leave; I would be paid by the company that hired me for those six months, but having a safety net to return to gave me all the confidence I needed to step out on a limb and try something new.
    While most people externed at start-ups, hedge funds, or private equity firms, some did use their time to work at nonprofits. This could be my chance to work more formally with Scott Neeson at the Cambodian Children’s Fund. In addition to expanding its child-sponsorship program, I could use part of my time away from Bain to backpack throughout Southeast Asia. This was exactly the type of life I’d been dreaming about, andI became completely focused on getting everything in order to secure my externship.
    As my attention started shifting away from Bain, I started looking more deeply at my life beyond work. I was meeting some extraordinary people in New York and having more inspired conversations. My friend Dennis from SAS had put me in touch with his friend Jen Williams, who was working at a nonprofit. Dennis thought we would become fast friends, so on a Saturday morning in late September, Jen and I met for brunch. She told me about her work with the Linus Foundation, a nonprofit started by students in the Washington University class of 2006 to offer service and support to homeless youth. Over a stack of pancakes and orange juice, she explained how she managed teams across seventeen campus chapters via monthly board calls.
    “How many employees do you have?” I asked.
    “No, this isn’t my job,” she clarified. “I work in marketing at a strategic PR firm. Linus is something I do on the side.”
    “Oh. But what about the guys who started it? Don’t they do this full-time?”
    “No, this is on the side for them too. Everyone has a regular, full-time job. We do it as volunteers because we love it.”
    This was a revolutionary idea to me. Since I’d moved into New York City, my life had consisted of working at Bain and drinking after hours. Sometimes those two overlapped, but I’d never considered doing anything else. The concept of having any kind of extracurricular life had been buried after college. I didn’t do clubs. Or take classes. Or engage in anything besides work and play.
    “How can I get involved?” I asked.
    *  *  *
    After brunch, I met up with Dennis to walk through Central Park. It was a beautiful, warm September afternoon, the last gasp of summer; the leaves had yet to change. But a tense feeling was in the city. We were on the cusp of a total economic meltdown. Lehman Brothers had declared bankruptcy, and Bear Stearns had gone under months earlier. Layoffs were rampant. Some of my friends who had just started working were getting fired and returning home to live with their parents.
    Dennis had chosen to leave his job at Bank of New York to build a start-up that allowed individuals to crowdsource funding for movie-studio films. He and Zach, the two friends I had traveled to Southeast Asia with years earlier, had successfully raised money from venture capital investors to chase their dream.
    “I admire your courage to leave a secure job,” I said as we meandered through the park. “But my plan is to work for the next twenty years, make as much money as possible, and then use that affluence and network to build schools throughout the developing world. But I’ll only take the risk once