A conversation with Guy Ben-Aharon on being a founder

A dynamic stage director?and cultural entrepreneur, Guy Ben-Aharon is the Founder and Executive Director of The Jar, where he developed a unique Convener Model that creates some of the most diverse and vibrant audiences in the US cultural landscape. Under Guy’s leadership, The Jar has doubled its impact year-to-year since its founding in 2019, brought programming to over a dozen neighborhoods across Boston, and secured a $750,000 grant from the Mellon Foundation to scale the organization’s impact.

As a theater director, Guy will be making his European stage debut in 2024 with Anat Gov's "Oh God" at the Landestheater Linz in Austria. Through his work at his previous organization, Israeli Stage, as well as the Goethe-Institut, Austrian Cultural Forum, swisssnex, and Alliance Fran?aise, Guy has worked on over 50 premieres of plays in translation since 2010.?

Guy has been featured in The Boston Globe, The Times of Israel, The Washington Post, WBUR, and other media outlets for his work to promote meaningful connection through the arts.

My conversation with Guy has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Jared: Let’s start with a question I ask most of my guests: Why do you do what you do?

Guy: I do what I do because I'm curious and I enjoy the people I do it with. I find that as a world, more and more people are lacking connection. Whatever I do, whether it's through helping create relationships across differences at The Jar, directing a play, or facilitating a retreat between Palestinian and Israeli artists, I do what I do to create connection.

Jared: For as long as I've known you, you've always been a contrarian or a rebel; someone who marches to the beat of his own drum. Where did this way of being come from?

Guy: I think it has something to do with being Jewish. Judaism is a religion that is based in questioning, not in answering. I also think it's a family trait. My great grandfather has the word pioneer written on his grave. It says “Pioneer, fulfiller of dreams.”

Impatience and boredom are a part of it. If someone told me I had to do the same thing every day for the rest of my life, I'd jump into the sea. I don't know that I’d call myself a rebel or contrarian, but I do have a certain combination of chutzpah, impatience, and curiosity that has led me to continue finding and founding.?

Jared: What’s your theory on social change?

Guy: To change the world requires some people on the inside and others on the outside. There are many different roles in a revolution or in an evolution. There’s the person standing on top of the mountain yelling, "Here's the mountaintop! Let's go here!" And then there are people at the bottom of the mountain going, "I don't want to go up. It looks difficult. It looks horrible." And then there are translators along the way who say, "You know, you don't have to climb up this steep track. Maybe you can go around the mountain and slowly climb it from the other side.”

Founders are often the people yelling from the top of mountains, going, "Hey, I think I found something.” It’s the role I am most comfortable in.

Jared: That's a great metaphor. Talk to me more about what it means to be a founder.?

Guy: Founding is the ability to see somewhere you want to go and the skill set to galvanize a group around getting there. It also means recognizing that you don't have the skills to do it yourself – that you need translators, shepherds, gardeners, and hunters.

Founders need to have a combination of visioning and doing. They come up with the vision and attract people around them to help achieve the vision. A good founder listens quite a bit, too. Looking back, when I've founded things more successfully, it’s when I have a vision and then I talk about it with a bunch of people. I listen, I gather information, then pave the path forward.

Jared: When you talk about a vision with other people, what do you do with the information you collect?

Guy: I use it to help pave the path, to figure out which path people will most likely take. And to determine how I can gather more people. If you want to found something that five people use, you only have to convince five people. If you want to double your impact year to year and ultimately serve 10,000 people, you need to find a path that makes sense for 10,000 people to walk down.

The listening part involves deducing what conditions the path needs so that more and more people walk down it. It also involves deciding who will be the first people to walk down the path – your first generation – then your second generation, your third generation.?

Also, it’s natural for the vision to evolve based on what you learn. Whatever you said at the beginning is likely not going to be how you articulate it to people later. You learn how to make it clearer and more digestible.

The Jar’s founding mission was to produce cultural encounters that delight, ignite and unite a diverse and vibrant audience. We started out thinking it was a producing company, and quickly discovered that we were more of a community building organization, so the Board approved a change to Building a cultural community at the intersection of equity, art and relationships. This second iteration of the mission has become harder and harder to say to someone on the street, and doesn’t reflect The Jar’s focus on enabling personal change and action. Therefore, The Jar is currently considering changing its mission to something like, Use arts and culture to inspire individuals to build relationships with people who are like them and not like them.”

Jared: How do you meet other people where they are to join you as a colleague?

Guy: If they're working on a founding team, they have to be "all in" on the vision. Another part of the listening process is deducing what role a person is going to play. Is it the spokesperson? Is it your translator? Is it your co-strategist? If it's just about getting stuff done, you meet them where they're at. It's important to ground them in the vision, values, and the mission, but at the end of the day, you're just talking about what needs to get done. Because what they're interested in is getting stuff done. And if you're looking for your strategist, don't get too granular. Listen to the language that person speaks and match yourself to their language.

Jared: How do you meet other people like followers or participants where they’re at?

If a participant wants to join for the first time, they will not have a sophisticated understanding of the vision like you have, because you spend 24 hours a day thinking about it, and they don’t. You have to find a way to talk to them about it in two minutes.?

Jared: When you're doing something that challenges the status quo, you inevitably face resistance or people who are uninterested in what you’re doing. How do you ignore the naysayers and continue to push forward?

Guy: “No” means later.?

There's a donor I've known for six years. They're an institutional donor who gives to brand names, so I knew they weren’t going to support a new organization. But I made a point to keep in touch with them. At one point, I said, "Hey, can we have a conversation? As an institutional person, I'm curious what you think about something innovative I’m creating because as we grow, we’re going to need people like you. So how am I going to get them on board?" I took them through The Jar case, and I stopped at the end. I didn't say anything. They looked at me and said, "Well, how can I join?" And I laughed and said, "Oh, so you want to join?" They said, "Yeah, this sounds like a good time." Then we moved on to having them come to a program. And that was after many “no's.”?

The other thing is, you just keep going. My background is in theater. The reality in the theater world is that it's a bunch of people telling you “no” over and over again. If you let it get to you, you're probably not going to have a life in the theater. The two percent who say “yes” will make your career – that’s really all it takes.?

Jared: Totally. There are people who are skilled at turning a “no” into a positive. They reframe it to mean “I'm actually trying.”

Guy: Most people think “no” is a personal vendetta against them. It's not. You're really not that interesting. It's about whether the person you’re talking to had enough coffee that day or slept well.

Jared: Or maybe they're in their head about something that has nothing to do with you.

Guy: Exactly. At first when I was a founder, I took it really personally when someone said “no.” I took it to mean that they're not interested in me. I thought, “Guy, get over yourself.” There are so many people asking others constantly for interactions. The reality is, who has time? So, it's really not you. It’s the old George Costanza saying, “It's not you, it's me.”

Jared: You told me recently that you've been thinking a lot about joy. How can we lead from a place of joy?

Guy: Well, you have to find your grounding. If your grounding is in making money, that's going to lead you to make certain life decisions. If your grounding is about gaining social status, that's going to lead you to make others choices. And if your grounding is in joy, it will lead you to make decisions around joy. I do what I do because I'm curious. Sure, sometimes it's hard. But if it's not rooted in joy, I'm out. It's not worth it.

Grounding myself in joy attracts certain types of people. Since my career has involved making things from scratch, I want to have fun while doing it. When I think about how I spend time with the people I work most closely with now, I often do stop and smell flowers, quite literally. When we’re out walking, there's time for that. Or, there's time for observations that make us laugh.

There are some people who want to make the world a better place, and that's wonderful. I think the amount of people who want to do that just for its own sake is very, very small. I think most people want to make a better world because it's fun – because you're leading it to a more fun and joyful place. Leading from a place of joy is not only about sharing how much the world will be better because of your vision, but how much fun you’ll have along the way.

Jared: Saying that being a founder is hard is an understatement. What’s something you wish founders were more open about?

Guy: One of the things I’ve enjoyed most is being in the company of other founders. It has nothing to do with advancing my own project and everything to do with curiosity. “So, what are you about? How do you go about what you do?” Forums like these are important – they’re not about networking – they’re spaces for leaders to connect from a place of curiosity and support. When I talk to other founders, I'm like, "Oh, there's my tribe."?

Another thing is the importance of mentors. Having strong mentors makes leading less lonely. And if they're much older, usually their ego is out of the way. They're not competing with you. I've been very lucky to find mentors like these.

Jared: What's one thing a current or aspiring founder should know to increase their likelihood of success?

Guy: Build a practice of reminding yourself why you started or are starting in the first place. Keep asking yourself, “Why do I do what I do?” People often lose sight of the why because they're so focused on the how or the what. They're like, “I’ve gotta get to this vision!” They often forget why they came up with their vision in the first place.

If you take the practice of connecting back to that initial impulse – the why –? it'll put everything else into place.

Jared: Thanks so much for leaving us with this practice, Guy. Where can people learn more about you or The Jar?

Guy: All things Jar can be found at www.jumpinthejar.org. And if you’re curious, watch this 57-second video that’ll provide you a front row seat to what’s happening at The Jar.?

For my professional updates, follow me on LinkedIn; for my political frustration, follow me on Twitter; and for my travels, follow me on Instagram.