I’m 16 pls.
A high schooler couldn’t sleep, so he spent $500 on flyers. Most adults with the same problem spend five years thinking about it.
The Wall Street Journal ran a story this weekend on Avi Lichtenstein, a 16-year-old junior in New York City.
He was lying awake every night asking what he was going to do with his life. So he took about $500 of his own savings, hired two guys off Craigslist, and had more than 300 flyers taped to lightpoles across the city.
Selfie on top. One ask underneath. “Do you have a cool job and a big heart? Let me shadow you. I’m 16 pls.”
The first response came the next day. A dog groomer. He spent three hours watching her shampoo a dog and asked about her schedule, her training, and whether she actually liked the work.
Since then: a satellite radio morning show, a ramen shop in the Bronx that hired him part time, an airline captain offering a morning flight to D.C., and a TikTok that pulled 300,000 views and two dozen more invitations. He’s tracking all of it in a spreadsheet.
His last line in the piece: “I still don’t know what I want to do with my life.”
Good. He’s 16. He’s not supposed to. But he’s going to find out a lot faster than the rest of us!
💡 The Idea
Anxiety AND action pull from the same tank!
Avi couldn’t put his mind to rest, so he put his feet in motion.
The fear didn’t get solved. It got SPENT!
He that observeth the wind shall not sow; and he that regardeth the clouds shall not reap. Ecclesiastes 11:4
Here’s the number that stopped me. Three hundred. Not a perfect plan. Not a personality test. Not a vision board. A $500 bet and a QR code.
Tim Ferriss calls it fear-setting. Write down the worst case and notice how survivable it is. Avi’s worst case was 300 pieces of paper nobody scanned. Out $500, right back where he started. So he went.
🚀 Plug and Play
Business. I coach owners and their sales teams, and the most common disease on a sales floor is not laziness. It’s research. The rep who has studied a prospect’s LinkedIn for forty minutes and still hasn’t dialed. The owner with an eleven-tab spreadsheet on a hire he hasn’t made. Notice the order Avi ran. Flyer first. THEN the questionnaire, the LinkedIn check, the video call. The vetting came after the yes. Do the math with me. 300 asks produced three shadows, one job, and two dozen more offers inside a month. What would 300 asks do to your pipeline by Thanksgiving?
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Fitness. Boston Qualifier is not a plan. It’s a flyer on a lightpole. The miles that get me there are never the ones I think about from the couch. Lace up first. Sort out the splits on the road.
Family. Beau is 8, and he asks for things exactly the way Avi does. Direct, no preamble, zero fear of looking dumb. “Can we build the fort tonight?” He doesn’t wait for a cleaner living room or a better moment. Somewhere between 8 and 38 we learn to ask for less. I’d like to unlearn it.
Life. Avi’s mom told the Journal his three older siblings all waited until college to figure it out. Avi is different. Different is mostly just earlier. Different is mostly just ACTION.
😬 The Self-Own
I’ll take the L. I have a list on my phone, too. Not of jobs. Of people I keep meaning to reach out to. A couple of coaches, an author, two owners I’d love to shadow for a day. That list has been sitting there since spring. Flyers posted: zero. Asks sent: a Should Monster-approved zero. A 16-year-old lapped me with $500 and a Craigslist ad.
Oh… just me? K. Carry on.
🔥 The Move
Here’s the move. Let’s put the flyer up this week.
- Write the one-line ask. Avi’s was “Let me shadow you.” Yours might be “Can I get 20 minutes” or “Would you look at this.” One sentence. No throat-clearing.
- Send it to ten people before Friday. Not the perfect ten. The first ten.
- Keep the spreadsheet. Who you asked, what they said, what you learned. The spreadsheet is where the anxiety goes to die.
That’s the forward pull. You don’t have to know what you want to do with your life. You have to put the flyer up.
Questions for you
- What’s the ask you’ve been researching instead of sending?
- Who would you shadow for a day if you were 16 and a little braver? What’s actually stopping you now?
TGIT!
GO GET IT!
-Drew
