Thirty Years, and Still Growing
Thirty years ago this month I launched Out & About, a brand new gay travel publication. Running Out & About for the following ten years was the most fun I’d had since scooping ice cream at Haagen-Dazs on the Upper West Side of Manhattan my sophomore year of college.
My business partner Billy Kolber and I met while working at American Express. When we decided to quit our jobs and take our chances with the business, I was 8 years into corporate life. Across all of those years I regularly asked myself: “How did I get here?” … “Why am I wearing this suit?” … “Can this really be why I went to Brown?” … and “How can I get out of here?”
My escape from corporate life came when I realized that the two driving factors in my world — my love of travel and my budding gay life — held the answer to my entrepreneurial dreams. So with Billy by my side, we studied up on the small-but-growing gay travel market, quit our jobs, handed out flyers at the NY and LA pride parades, bought some lists, and printed our first issue in September 1992. Eight years later, we sold it to PlanetOut, scratching our heads at our good fortune.
What I love about those years was that Billy and I were open to doing things we’d never done before and trusting ourselves to learn along the way. Some things went really well, including non-stop media coverage, a sweet book deal, an easy transition to the nascent web, making many amazing friends, and simply being part of perhaps the most exciting LGBTQ business moment ever. But we also worried about money (well, I did), launched a total flop of a newsletter called Travelphile, and navigated running a gay business during the age of AIDS.
After selling Out & About and suffering through two years of dot-com pain at PlanetOut, I was free to do my next thing. Which turned out to be 5 years of consulting (ugh!), one huge failure of a startup (ugh!), and 5 years working in global health (another ugh!, though I’m very proud of that work). I never could have imagined that my heady entrepreneurial years would be followed by such challenging career twists and turns, but even in those harder years, the connections, growth and experiences I accumulated were super meaningful, and sometimes a lot of fun.
What I’ve learned is that we have a lot of years to do a lot of things in one life. I’m proud of the boldness and creativity that drove me to start Out & About 30 years ago. I’m equally proud of the spirit with which I have embraced change through all of my work phases.
Amazingly, my work of the past eight years as a coach helping people navigate their own work and life transitions has been as fulfilling and enjoyable as anything I’ve done before. And I could never be as good as it as (I think) I am if I wasn’t building on all those amazing experiences – and chances taken – along the way.
Here’s to celebrating the big accomplishments in life, and to trusting that more will come if you’re willing to keep inventing yourself.