Tehrene Firman, founder of Love Twenty Magazine

Tehrene is a woman after my own heart. If, sometime after I call myself a post-grad, I have the opportunity to work on a project with her, I have a feeling she’ll only impress me that much more.

I don’t know the elaborate history behind Tehrene’s brainchild, Love Twenty, a lifestyle magazine for twentysomething women looking to graduate from Seventeen and Tiger Beat but not quite ready to jump into Elle and Glamour and Cosmopolitan. But it does not surprise me to know she developed the magazine on her spring break last year.

I know what goes on during spring break. It’s the reason my dad ruled Cancun out of our potential trip plans this March, the reason my little sister drove down the rickety roads of South Carolina to crash in a cheap motel for the week.

There just aren’t many of us who line up our life plan during that one-week stretch between winter break and spring graduation. Big dreams or not, it falls flat on the floor and gets kicked behind bikini straps and Coppertone tanning oils.

But man, Tehrene’s got my attention with her web design and coding and writing and brand-making and all. She did not waste any time going from that moment, that elusive thought that seems to crop up often in my head, of “oh my gosh, let’s do it,” and “here it is, world.”

Her magazine’s grown to almost 1,300 Twitter followers and 70-plus team members. She has created a monster.

And, I am sure, it began with a simple conversation. A step onto the ledge of “Are we for real about this? Is this really happening?” and then a jump into the wild, whirling world.

The biggest chances begin when you let them become not theoretical conversations over cups of coffee and crumb cake but actual executions. Phone calls to friends and notebooks with design doodles and post-it notes all over your computer screen with things you cannot forget.

And from the perspective of a girl with sixteen new ideas a month, a girl who has a loud voice sitting on her shoulder telling her to just hold onto that newest sucker of an idea for a while, that is quite a brave and beautiful thing she did.

I imagine there are plenty of us sitting on the other side of computer screens, reading and waiting for the next idea to come along and seem plausible. When, we wonder, is it OK to not just dip our toes in the water but splash headfirst into the icy cold?

And the answer, according to the Tehrene method, is right this second.

Colleges are breaking for the semester. Keep that in mind and go big, baby.

[Lesson 1 via Hannah Katy]
[Lesson 2 via Katie Colihan]

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