40 FOR 40: Create Something. Give Something.
There are birthdays. And then there are birthdays that feel like a threshold.
I’m turning 40.
Forty trips around the sun. Forty years of becoming, unbecoming, learning, creating, falling down, getting back up, loving, dreaming, changing my mind and discovering more and more about what it means to be alive.
And as this milestone approached, I kept thinking: How do I want to celebrate it?
Of course, there are plenty of things I could do like throw a big party, buy myself something beautiful, go somewhere fabulous, have a minor existential crisis and get bangs? But none of those ideas quite captured what turning 40 means to me. I wanted to mark this chapter by doing something that represents what I want more of in the next one: Creation. Connection. Contribution.
And… that’s how 40 FOR 40 was born.
40 humans. 40 minutes. $40 each.
For my 40th birthday, I’m opening up 40 special 40-minute Creation Pow Wows through Create with Hareni.
Each Pow Wow is just $40. And 100% of that $40 will be donated to Youth Off The Streets, supporting their work with young people in Australia.
No birthday presents required. Instead, I’d love you to bring me something else - your ideas, your dreams, your business, your book, your personal brand, your career pivot, your creative project, your campaigns, your “I’ve had this idea for 3 years and keep telling myself I’ll do it one day…”, or even the tiny whisper inside you saying:
There has to be something more. I just don’t know what it is yet. Yes, bring me that!
What exactly is a Creation Pow Wow?
It isn’t a traditional coaching session, it isn’t a consultation and I am definitely not going to make you sit through a PowerPoint presentation. Think of it as a creative thinking jam. It’ll be forty minutes to give the thing inside your head a little oxygen.
You are welcome to bring me the messy version - all the scribbles, questions, possibilities, doubts and “Hareni, this might sound completely ridiculous, but…” Yes, especially those. Those are usually my favourites. Together, we’ll poke at the idea. Pull it apart. Ask questions. Connect dots. Challenge assumptions. Make it bigger. Make it smaller. Turn it upside down. And listen for the possibility underneath all the noise.
You don’t need to arrive knowing exactly what you want. You just need to arrive curious.
From “What if?” to “What next?”
There’s a particular moment I love in creative conversations. Someone starts talking about an idea almost apologetically. They’re unsure. They qualify everything. They tell me all the reasons it probably won’t work. And then we start playing.
Suddenly their posture changes. Their eyes light up. They lean forward. And somewhere between one idea and another comes: “WAIT…” There it is. Possibility.
That’s the moment I want these Pow Wows to create. Because sometimes we don’t need another strategy. We don’t need another course. We don’t need another six months of thinking. Sometimes we simply need another human to sit across from us and say: Tell me more.
You’ll leave with one tiny move
I’m not promising that we’ll build your entire business, write your book, reinvent your career and discover the meaning of life in 40 minutes. That would be an ambitious Tuesday. But I do want you to leave with something tangible. We’ll take all the possibilities we’ve uncovered and ask:
What’s the smallest thing you could do next to prove this idea exists?
Maybe it’s writing the first page, calling someone, testing an offer, creating a prototype, registering the name, posting the idea, inviting five people, recording episode one or starting the conversation. The goal isn’t to have everything figured out. The goal is the energy of movement. One tiny act that takes something from the invisible world of imagination and brings it into reality.
Why Youth Off The Streets?
Because I didn’t want this birthday campaign to only be about creation. I wanted it to be about contribution too.
So every person who joins a Creation Pow Wow will contribute $40, with 100% donated to Youth Off The Streets. Forty people means the potential to collectively contribute $1,600 - while also creating 40 conversations about ideas, dreams and possibilities.
There’s something about that equation that makes me very happy. Create something. Give something.
Same conversation. Bigger impact.
Why am I doing this?
The older I get, the more I realise how extraordinarily precious our time here is. There are ideas we keep postponing, words we don’t say, things we want to make, people we want to become and lives we imagine living someday.
And someday has a sneaky habit of remaining someday. I’ve become increasingly interested in what happens when we stop waiting for permission and start listening to what keeps calling us.
Not recklessly. Not perfectly. Just courageously enough to take the next tiny step.
Because I believe the ideas that keep returning to us deserve our attention. Maybe not every idea needs to become a business, maybe not every dream needs to become enormous, maybe nobody else even needs to understand it yet, but perhaps the things that make something inside us come alive deserve the chance to exist. That belief sits at the heart of Create with Hareni.
Create what calls you.
So, what’s calling you?
Maybe you’ve been carrying something quietly, maybe there’s an idea sitting in your Notes app, maybe you’re standing at a crossroads, maybe something wants to change, maybe something wants to begin, or maybe you just need 40 minutes with someone who will ask you different questions.
Bring me the messy version, bring me the unfinished version, bring me the “this might be crazy…” version. We’ll start there.
40 years.
40 humans.
40 minutes.
$40 each.
100% donated to Youth Off The Streets.
And hopefully…
40 little possibilities given permission to breathe.
My birthday wish is surprisingly simple. I don’t want more things.
I want more things brought into the world.
So tell me:
What is calling you to create?
Come Pow Wow with me.
Create something. Give something. Create what calls you.