Last Week Today: 28th birthday thoughts

July 24, 2023

Welcome to my Substack where I share a recap of my week. Think of this as a virtual catch-up session between friends with some life tips & advice sprinkled in. Take what serves you and leave what does not. Grab a cup of tea 🍵 (or your beverage of choice) and let's get started ☕️

Highlight of the week🔥

I celebrated my 28th birthday this weekend. Feels weird to be officially in my late 20s (because at 27 I swore that it still passed for "mid-20s”. What is it about aging that I’m so afraid of??) I felt loved and celebrated and very excited to ring in this year with new realizations and learnings.

Something I realized this year is that I’m finally at the age where I thought I’d feel like an adult (or act like an adult?). Maybe I am technically a year wiser, but I feel the same. I used to look up to people in their late 20s like “wow they’ve accomplished so much and they know so much”. But now as someone who has finally arrived in her late 20s, the bubble has burst. And I’m here to burst the bubble for you too. I’m here to tell you that people in their late 20s and early 30s don’t know it all.

On the outside, you see the LinkedIn profiles and you see the career awards and accolades. But more and more, I’m speaking with close friends around my age and older and they’re still figuring it out: figuring out career, figuring out social life, figuring out romance, figuring out relationship with family, figuring out hobbies, figuring what gives them joy, figuring out life. I’m realizing that there isn’t an ideal state of being, that this whole thing we’ve been doing for 28 years is continuing to figure it out. And it’s going to be more of that for the rest of our lives when new challenges and new experiences arise. How do we become at peace with this journey? Oh f*ck. Bubble. Burst.

And of course I had to create a mood board for my birthday garden party; you know the vibes. I got inspo from garden parties I’ve been seeing on TikTok and IG.

What’s cooking 🥘

In this next episode of my podcast, Cherie's Corner, I speak with my Stanford MBA classmate, Gabriela Forter. She’s a dual admit to Harvard and Stanford MBA programs. She talks about choosing Stanford and also still ending up going to Harvard, not for her business degree, but for her Masters in Public Policy. Despite having a successful career in consulting at Deloitte and product management at Meta, she still finds value in pursuing two masters degrees; she explains her reasoning and thinking behind this decision. Gabriela discusses her multi-year strategy and plan she took when applying to MBA programs. She also gives advice to people who are currently in their application process. Finally, Gabriela is one of the most mindful people I know and we discuss how journaling and meditation led her to figure out her career goals and deal with imposter syndrome and not feeling FOMO. I hope you enjoy this episode!

💅🏻 ICYMI: What I posted on IG Reels

🎓 Most famous GSB Class: Touchy Feely

💫 Jae’s Story of Working and Living at the DMZ in Korea

📚 Bringing my Classmates to Their First Hot Yoga Class

👾 What is a Search Fund?

❤️ Why MBA: Gabriela Forter Interview

What I’m consuming: Launchpad Office Hours

I received Stanford grant funding to work on my own entrepreneurial project this summer. There are 30 other Stanford graduate students who are in this incubator program with me. As part of this cohort, we also receive “founder support” in the form of educational workshops and this week’s workshop I met with Jeremy Utley, Director of Executive Education at Stanford University's design school also known as Stanford d.school.

Jeremy’s advice to entrepreneurs starting out is to quickly test a hypothesis (like a 2-hour experiment) before going in and building a product. If entrepreneurs are able to quickly validate their hypothesis with a 2-hour experiment, it saves work, time, and money in the long run.

He says that “entrepreneurs can collect little data points quickly by cleverly crafting discrete experiments. Entrepreneurs take action in the face of the unknown.” He emphasizes that founders should be action-oriented; it doesn’t have to necessarily be the right action, but it should be an action that creates some sort of learning and leads to new iterations. Finally, Jeremy suggests that we give users choices; force people to make a decision rather than asking them for feedback. That way you can get more useable data - you quickly learn people’s preferences. As part of my homework this week, I’ll be trying to figure out what is the 2-hour experiment I can run on my content. Here’s Jeremy’s YouTube video sharing his methodologies.

What I’m perplexed by

Barbie or Oppenheimer? Which one do I see first in theaters? Barbie’s director, Greta Gerwig, went to my Alma mater, Barnard College — Barnard pride! So I guess that answers that.

Meme Reminder

Idk, but looks like a garden party to me

XO Cherie

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