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“You can’t help getting older, but you don’t have to get old.” - George Burns
INTERVIEW II WILL KITCHEN ENTREPRENEUR, CONSULTANT,
AND CO-DIRECTOR OF THE “OFFICE OF POSSIBILITIES”
AT NORTHWESTERN MICHIGAN COLLEGE
April 16, 2024
In the old days, communities revered their elders as trusted advisors who represented the people’s interests and pursuits. Though today we may not hold to that practice as stalwartly, Traverse City has one such person: Will Kitchen, a “modern elder” as he describes himself. Will is known around town as a great connector, a champion for others, and an innate motivator. He ignites the fuse of conviviality and then lets the rest happen naturally, which is pure and authentic guidance.
Among his entrepreneurial prowess, forming the “Office of Possibilities” (OOPs) stands out as his principal third-chapter mission. Thanks to OOPs there now exists a guild of talented, giving humans helping each other to thrive. It’s a throwback to how communities once were, coupled with the advantage of societal contemporaneity.
As his tagline is written, “Where there is a Will, there are many, many ways.”
Interviewer:
What is your third chapter? What does that mean to you, what does it symbolize, and what are you doing at this stage of life that has changed over the years?
Will:
“I started my third chapter probably a decade ago, and right now I'm looking at continuing to be involved in my community. The third chapter for me is to take the experience that I have, the good and the bad, and bring it back to people within the community to support them with the things they want to do.
The third chapter also means I'm going to have fun with life. I'm not just here to work. It is the time for me to give back—to support the younger generation of leaders. I'm here to support people and to assist them in any way I can and to be a modern elder - not an elderly person. It's the way I've always lived my life so it's nothing new, but it's fun to be doing those things at this stage of my life.”
Interviewer:
A big focus for us in this current series is how and why people chose Traverse City as their home base. How did you get here and what keeps you here?
Will:
“Well, I got here the first time about 8 years ago after my wife passed away. I decided to go someplace where I didn't know anybody, and I had done some consulting work in Traverse City back in the late 80s and thought, ‘Well what the hell?’ I'll go there and see what it's like. I stayed for a couple of years, really enjoyed it, met some good people, and then was asked by friends to come back to Minnesota to do some interesting work but I always intended to come back. Once I got back here and learned more about it, I found it was one of the ‘biggest small towns’ I've been in. It has a small-town mentality with big-city ambitions. I encountered people from all over the country who came back here or are here for the first time, which makes it dynamic. For the things that I'm interested in [centered] community development, innovation, and entrepreneurship, I'm constantly meeting people who want to be part of this [place] and offer a great deal to the community and entrepreneurs. So I just found it was a good spot for me. Is it perfect? No, but I don't think any place is. It is worth working towards making it the best place it can be. What I love about wherever I live is that I put myself into it [fully] and this community has accepted me.”
Interviewer:
How do you think we can preserve the preciousness of this place while making it attractive to young people coming in from larger cities?
Will:
"I think we have to break the molds on what we think of in terms of economic development, entrepreneurship, and community and also of what we want to get out of our lives. We do have one amazing resource here— freshwater. That's going to draw a lot of people here over the next few decades and that's going to have a major impact on the community itself so I think [we need to] start looking at planning strategically in a different way as opposed to the way we have over the past 30, 40, 50 years. How do we develop individuals and groups of people to do what they want with their lives, to make the community better, to make their lives better? If we can't do that we have a catastrophic surprise ahead of us.
We’ve got to focus on individual well-being, the understanding of well-being, being connected to our community, connected to nature, and developing new types of jobs, businesses, and startups that add to the whole feeling of ‘This is our world, this is our community, let's make it better.’I was listening to a podcast interview with [entrepreneur and author] Seth Godin, and he said ‘The Earth is going to be okay, it's people who are going to die.’ That just opened my eyes and made me think ‘Let's protect and nurture our community and the things we do so that we don’t become an extinct species.’
Interviewer:
There’s a large demographic of the Boomer generation, certainly more than most cities I’ve lived in. What are you doing in your life, or what do you notice others in the community doing, to stay healthy, active, and engaged, to set yourself up for positive longevity?
Will:
“One of the things that I hold near and dear to my heart is that no matter what age I am, I want to continue to be curious. Once you’re curious, you have purpose and are open to learning. We also have an epidemic of loneliness in the world. I need to be surrounded by people who are curious and challenge my ways of thinking.
I don't want to just be around Boomers. I want to be around elders and younger people. I think that we tend to silo in America today, especially when you become the older generation. We have 55 and older communities and people are all the same, homogenous. I don't want that. I want to be with people who are 20, 30, 40, 50 years old and who keep challenging me. Do I have a little more experience than some? Sure, but man, they challenge me—they keep me up to date on what's happening so that I'm no longer obsolete. Hopefully, I'm an okay learner—that's what keeps me going. I think we need to focus on the mentality of being around a diverse community. If we can't have that here, I'm gone.”
Interviewer:
What are some things you’re doing in a vastly different way from your parents’ generation?
Will:
“My dad would be 123 if he were alive today, my mom would be 110, and I'm an only child so there was a bit of a wait before I was born. Do I do things differently? Absolutely. I mean they were the ‘grandparents generation’ for me and many people my age.
I take care of my health, I watch what I eat, I exercise, I go to the doctor regularly—I do all the things I'm supposed to, which are things my parents never did. They never traveled, and they never experienced the world in the way that I've had the opportunity to, and I'm not saying that negatively, they just didn't have the money, they didn't have the access. I think things are completely different—I am not my dad.”
Interviewer:
As far as confronting an antiquated form of retirement, do you have some version of what that plan is, or do you not see yourself ever fully slowing down?
Will:
“Yeah, I don’t think I’ll ever fully slow down. I failed retirement five times. Every time I said ‘Well, I'm done I'm going to relax now,’ people would reach out and say ‘Hey Will, could you do this project, could you turn around this company, could you start a new entrepreneur program at the University,’ whatever it is. So that tells me I'm doing something right and that I'm still focused on the things that keep me young which are beneficial for our community. For me, retirement is not an option because it does not fit my lifestyle and interests.”
Interviewer:
This is a big question, yet very simple: what is your purpose?
Will:
“That may change from time to time, but I look at myself today as someone who connects people. I want to help build community—so my purpose is to be the glue that brings people together, to encourage them to work together. It's nothing big, I'm not looking to be the next executive or whatever the title is. My purpose right now is to build the kind of community that I want to live in. Today’s purpose is to be there for those who may need me.”
Interviewer:
Can you tell me about OOPs (The Office of Possibilities) and how that group came to be? Also, can you speak to what the mission of OOPs is?
Will:
“OOPs started several years ago at a design thinking workshop on social impact and the two presenters, Nick Beadleston and Brittany VanderBeek were there, and I'd never met them. I sat down at a table with Josh Hart, Steve Rice, Al Everett, and Tex Chriqui and we hit it off immediately, talking about education and disruptive innovation. After that, several of us started meeting every week and then it grew from there. People would (see our meeting) and say ‘Hey, I understand that you're meeting at the college, can we come over and join?’ Pretty soon after, we got to the point where we had a group called ‘The Office of Possibilities.’ Since then, we've become a movement—we're not an organization, we're not owned by anybody. We're separate from and in-service to NMC and Commonplace, and we will do everything we can to work with both of them as much as we possibly can to drive innovation, startups, and ideas.
What is our mission? To continue to be different—you could describe us as whoever shows up at any given meeting, we're there for them and that is who we are at that point in time. The final thing I want to say about this is that our major focus is on the person first, the entrepreneur second, and then the business third. We believe that if you can't take care of your health and yourself, it makes it even more difficult to be a successful entrepreneur.”
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