When BC Hatchett and I founded HETMA, it was never about building a machine. It was about building a community. It wasn’t a business, it was just two people filling a need.
It came about from seeing a gap in the industry for our vertical and knowing that the people doing the same work we do needed a place to belong. They needed a voice. They needed advocacy. They needed peers who understood the unique challenges of serving campuses, supporting faculty, modernizing classrooms, defending budgets, and trying to make meaningful impact in environments where technology decisions are never just about technology. They are about people, learning, outcomes, and feeling seen.
In the beginning, there is always a little bit of excitement in something like that. You start with energy, purpose, and a belief that maybe, just maybe, others are looking for the same thing. You are not thinking about scale. You are not thinking about infrastructure. You are not thinking about governance models, operational structures, sponsor expectations, legal considerations, or what happens when a passion-driven effort becomes something the industry starts to depend on. At first, it is simply about doing something good with people you believe in.
That is where many great things begin. But one of the most important lessons I learned was that there comes a moment when the thing you built out of passion stops being something you do for fun and starts becoming something people count on. There are real deliverables, with real conquests of actions, and non-actions. And when that happens, your mindset has to change.
That is what happened with HETMA. At some point, it was no longer just a steer committee trying to create something meaningful on the side. It was no longer just a good idea, a worthwhile cause, or a fun project fueled by late nights, volunteer energy, and personal commitment. It had become real. People were joining. Members were engaging. Institutions were paying attention. Manufacturers and solution providers wanted partnership. Industry media wanted perspective. Event organizers wanted collaboration. Leaders across higher education were looking to HETMA not just as an interesting community, but as a legitimate force in the industry.
That changes everything.
Because, once people start relying on what you built, it is no longer yours to treat casually. That is the transition many leaders struggle with. We love the entrepreneurial spirit of the beginning. We love the agility… The “organic” nature of it. We love the authenticity. We love the feeling that we are just building something with friendly colleagues, driven by shared purpose and the excitement of possibility. There is a joy in that stage that is hard to replicate. But growth brings responsibility, and responsibility demands a different level of professionalism.
That doesn’t mean becoming cold or a version of yourself that isn’t authentic. It does not mean becoming corporate for the sake of appearances. It does not mean losing the heart of what made the organization special in the first place. It means recognizing that passion alone is not enough to sustain something once it begins serving a broader mission. It means you are no longer just impacting some “idea,” but rather, real lives.
There is a major difference between creating something and stewarding something. Creating often runs on adrenaline. Stewardship runs on discipline. Creating thrives on vision. Stewardship requires systems.
Creating says yes to possibility. Stewardship asks how that possibility will be sustained, measured, funded, protected, and led. That is the point where “the fun of it” has to end.
In HETMA’s case, that meant learning that community cannot scale on good intentions alone. It needs structure. It needs expectations. It needs operational clarity. It needs standards. It needs leaders who are willing to move beyond simply loving the mission and into the harder work of building the framework that allows the mission to last. It means accountability up and down the organization, and even more so at the top.
When an organization is young, people often forgive inconsistency because they see the heart behind it. They see the hustle. They understand the volunteer nature of it. But the more successful you become, the less room there is for that. Not because people become less kind, but because the stakes become higher. Members deserve follow-through. Partners deserve deliverables. Sponsors deserve value in real ROI. Volunteers deserve direction. The industry deserves clarity about who you are and what you stand for.
If you keep operating like a hobby while everyone else is engaging with you like an institution, problems are inevitable. Meetings get missed. Communication gets loose. Processes stay undefined. Roles become blurry. Opportunities start arriving faster than they can be managed. The mission begins to compete with the mechanics of keeping the whole thing afloat. And before long, the very thing that was built to serve others starts straining under the weight of its own success. And there’s only so long the excuse of “victim of our own success” is tolerated before your biggest supports start jumping ship.
I think this is a lesson the AV industry needs to hear more often, because our space is full of people who build extraordinary things from passion. That is one of the best things about this industry. We are creators. We are innovators. We are connectors. We see a need and we move. But in AV, there is always a point where authenticity must be matched by accountability. That is not selling out… That is growing up.
With HETMA, there came a point where it was no longer enough to simply say we care about higher ed. We had to show what that meant in action. We had to think bigger about membership, engagement, events, partnerships, programming, scholarships, advocacy, and how all of it fit together into something sustainable. We had to ask harder questions. What is our long-term strategy? What does success look like? What do we say yes to, and what do we say no to? And everyone who knows me, knows how difficult that part is. It really comes down to, how do we preserve our culture while building a serious organization? How do we remain mission-first while also operating as a business with its own needs?
Those are not fun questions in the same way early vision casting is fun. They are heavier. They require maturity. They force discipline. They require leaders to stop thinking only like founders and start thinking like stewards. And that can be uncomfortable. The founder stage celebrates instinct. The stewardship stage demands intentionality. In the founder stage, you can get away with improvising. In the stewardship stage, improvisation becomes risk. In the founder stage, the energy of the mission can carry you. In the stewardship stage, the mission needs infrastructure, because energy alone is too fragile.
That is why some organizations plateau… They never make the mental shift. They continue to operate with the habits of a startup long after they have taken on the expectations of a serious enterprise. They want the credibility of being established without embracing the responsibility that establishment requires.
But real leadership means recognizing the season you are in. There is a season to build. There is a season to prove. There is a season to refine. And there is a season to formalize what has already become too important to leave unmanaged. For me, one of the biggest realizations in cofounding HETMA was understanding that losing the “start-up vibes” that grew the org is not the enemy of purpose. It is the protector of purpose. Without deliberate professionalism, good missions drift, good communities fracture, and good ideas (and volunteers) burn out. The heart may still be there, but the ability to deliver on that heart begins to erode.
Intensional professionalism is how you honor the people who trust you. It is how you respect the members who give their time and belief to what you are building. It is how you serve partners well. It is how you create consistency in the midst of growth. It is how you ensure that what began as a meaningful movement does not collapse under the pressure of becoming significant. That does not mean everything has to become rigid. In fact, some of the best organizations find a way to stay deeply human while also becoming deeply effective.
But that only happens when leaders embrace the reality that there is a difference between doing something because it is enjoyable and doing something because it matters. HETMA matters. It matters to higher ed professionals who have long wanted stronger representation in the AV conversation. It matters to those looking for community, mentorship, recognition, and opportunity. It matters to manufacturers and partners trying to better understand the higher ed market. It matters to the broader industry because higher education is not a niche afterthought. It is one of the most important and most complex verticals in our entire profession.
So when something like that starts as a passion project, there must come a day when you acknowledge what it has become. Not a hobby. Not a side thing. Not something you do when you have spare time. Something real. And when it becomes real, it deserves real leadership.
That is one of the most important shifts. We celebrate the spark and the new accomplishments, and we should. The spark matters. But sustaining impact requires more than spark. It requires commitment, process, accountability, and the willingness to evolve from passionate founder to responsible steward.
That is the difference between something that was fun to start and something that is built to last. And that is the moment you realize it is no longer just for fun.
Watch and listen to the Higher Ed AV Podcast episode featuring BC Hatchett here: https://higheredav.com/353-from-grassroots-to-gravity-with-bc-hatchett-higher-ed-av-podcast-with-joe-way/
