According to Trent Williams, life is like a hike; instead of being a linear process where the end is clear from the beginning, life is more of an emergent experience, with many winding twists and turns. As Williams remembers that God understands each unanticipated turn, he says he is better able to learn from unexpected experiences as they come.
An associate professor of entrepreneurship at the BYU Marriott School of Business, Williams specializes in studying the process of how and why businesses are formed and how they adapt to survive extreme instability, such as civil war and natural disasters. He says, “In entrepreneurship, we don’t know if an idea is going to work. And if we get married to one of the earliest ideas that we have and we’re unwilling to relinquish it or let it morph, then we’re probably going to fail.”
And, he observes, “I think it’s the same with our own lives.”
When Williams started his undergraduate degree at Brigham Young University, he had a very specific game plan for his life. He planned to play football throughout college, major in English and philosophy, and then continue his education by earning a PhD in continental philosophy and post-colonial literature.
However, at the beginning of his senior year, Williams suffered a career-ending sports injury. His sense of losing control was heightened when he also began experiencing an unexplainable feeling of burnout about his degree. He knew he needed to change subjects for his PhD, but he didn’t know where to start. “I was feeling lost,” Williams remembers.
As he searched for a new direction, Williams discovered a surprising possibility when an entrepreneur presented in one of his philosophy classes. Studying business had never crossed his mind—but he was intrigued by the entrepreneur’s description of how businesses functioned.
Williams worked with several startups following graduation and found he enjoyed investigating the “why” behind business decisions and how they affected consumers’ lives. Thinking he had found a new direction for his doctorate, he applied to a PhD program at Purdue University but was rejected. Instead, the business school had a counter offer: a spot in their MBA program, which Williams accepted. After completing his master’s degree, he worked briefly in management consulting before earning his PhD in entrepreneurship and strategic management from the Indiana University Kelley School of Business.
Looking back, Williams recognizes how the unexpected turns in his life were actually a blessing. “I collected important insights that were relevant for things that I did not yet know I was interested in,” he says. “We don’t always see the end of our experiences.” Williams recounts how the painful football injury opened his time to work as a writing consultant, which proved critical to gaining an assistantship during his MBA. He also realized that, if he had gotten into Purdue’s PhD program when he applied, he would have missed the chance to study entrepreneurship during his doctorate, as Purdue didn’t offer the track and Indiana was one of only a few schools offering it several years after his MBA.
Being open to change is a mindset Williams, as a faculty member, strives to help students adopt. He has advised many young adults who, as he describes, genuinely worry that they have ruined their lives by picking the wrong major or career. He understands his students’ desires for certainty, but he reminds them to stay flexible, focus on the big picture, and trust God—which he acknowledges is easier said than done. When facing ambiguity, Williams has found it helpful to focus on what he can learn and who he is becoming through each experience, letting go of the need to know specifics and trusting that God will illuminate the next step.
“What I’ve realized over the years is that God has such a great understanding of each of us, of our potential, we can’t even begin to grasp it,” he explains. Just as hikers traveling on a heavily wooded trail will eventually come to a beautiful vista overlooking their progress, Williams says he’s had moments where God has shown him the “why” behind some of his path’s twists and turns.
“I’m grateful that I’ve let it play out,” he reflects, “and tried the best I could to learn from each of my experiences, and been open to what it is that I might become that I never could have imagined.”
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Written by Katie Brimhall