I Gave the Commencement Address, They Wrote the Book

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Weekly Tips for Writing & Publishing Your Bestselling Book

Last Wednesday, I had the immense honor of delivering the commencement address to the inaugural graduating senior class of VALE, the Venture Academy of Leadership and Entrepreneurship. It’s a tuition-free public charter high school located just outside of Denver. I want to tell you the story of how I came to stand in front of these extraordinary seniors, because it begins where so many of the most meaningful chapters of my professional life have begun: with someone joining a cohort of Your Bestselling Book.

In the spring of last year, Laura Burke left her job as the founding principal of the Clara Brown Entrepreneurial Academy, the first free public entrepreneurial elementary school in the nation. During her brief time off, she joined a Your Bestselling Book cohort in order to write a book about her experience and inspire other people to start their own magnet and charter schools. By the end of the cohort, Laura had a draft. A few months later, just last week, she launched the book and immediately it shot up the ranks to bestseller. You can buy The Pursuit of What's Possible and leave her a 5-star review!

Last summer, Laura stepped into a new role as assistant principal of VALE, the Venture Academy of Leadership and Entrepreneurship. This is an entrepreneurial high school that grew out of the same visionary movement she had helped pioneer at the elementary level.

We spoke in the fall of 2025, and came up with a wild and beautiful idea. What if I helped her seniors, the first graduating class of VALE, write a book together? A senior legacy book for incoming freshmen, written by the very students who had walked the halls before them?

We said yes, of course, let’s do this, because that’s what entrepreneurs do!

Throughout this academic year, I met regularly via Zoom with the soon-to-be graduates. Three of the seniors stepped up as leaders of the book team, and they worked harder than I would have thought possible to rally their classmates to each contribute an essay about their high school experience. They wrangled deadlines. They offered free tutoring. And they did it!

Seventeen kids turned in essays. They wrote with honesty about peer pressure and bullying, about losing friends to addiction, about finding their voices for the first time in their lives, about transforming from failing students into young people who believed they were capable of greatness.

We published the book through The Story Cure Press, my own imprint, so that all proceeds of book sales go straight back to VALE. The copies arrived at the school office just one week before graduation!

Then, last Wednesday morning, I stepped onto the stage in Denver and looked out at those graduating seniors, their families seated across from them, and I gave my speech. Afterwards, Laura handed each of them a copy of their book.

It was, without exaggeration, one of the most magical and empowering experiences of my career.

Here is a brief excerpt from what I said to them that day:

Do not shrink yourself to fit into spaces that were designed for someone less interesting than you. Continue to seek out communities like this one, where you're celebrated for being exactly who you are.

The research is clear and your own experience, as seen in your book, confirms it. People who move forward in isolation are far less likely to finish and flourish than those who surround themselves with others who share their vision and their values. 

Here at VALE, you've forged real relationships with people who understand what it means to bet on yourself. Keep fostering relationships like these long after you've walked out that door.

When the inevitable hard moments come, because they will come, as you know, because that is what it means to attempt something meaningful in life, remember: The hard moments are setting you up for a future in which you continue to own your power as creators.

You can watch the full recording here. (Laura’s intro of me starts around 11 minutes 20 seconds).

I want to leave you with this thought. When Laura Burke joined our cohort last spring, she carried with her not only her own dream of writing a book, but the seed of another one that none of us imagined at the time. Her decision to write would ripple out and become a published book for the seventeen seniors she would soon lead. 

This is the magic of writing in community. Your story inspires the next one.

Hit reply and tell me about a moment when one of your decisions rippled out further than you expected. I read every response.

Aloha, MeiMei 

TIP OF THE WEEK: 

Write for One Specific Reader

When the VALE seniors wrote their essays, they were not writing for the world at large. They were writing for the freshman who would walk through their school’s doors in the fall, scared and uncertain, looking for someone who had walked the path before them. That singular focus gave their writing a tenderness and an honesty they might not have found otherwise. 

This week, before you sit down to work on your next chapter, newsletter, or Substack post, envision one specific reader in your mind. Maybe it's the person you were ten years ago. Maybe it's a friend who is struggling with a challenge you've already moved through. Maybe it's your own inner child. 

Write directly to that one person, as if you were composing them a long letter. You'll be amazed at how much more alive your words become.