"If you don't ask the question, the answer is always no." Glenn Rieker

 Twenty years ago I put three words on a license plate and drove away. I wasn't launching a movement or building a brand. I just knew that "what if" was the question I kept asking myself every time I was about to do something uncomfortable, something new, something that scared me just enough to be worth doing. I bolted it to the back of my truck where I'd see it in parking lots and other drivers would see it in traffic, and I figured if it meant something to me, maybe it would mean something to somebody else.

It does.

Eventually the mantra moved to the front of my work shirts — and that's when things got interesting. I can't get through a grocery store checkout or walk the length of a Home Depot aisle without somebody stopping mid-stride. They don't just notice the shirt. They read it out loud. What If U. And then something shifts — they tell me about the trip they've been putting off, the job they finally left, the question they've been afraid to answer. A woman in the cereal aisle tells me it's exactly what she asked herself before starting over at 58. A kid at the register just nods slowly and says yeah.

That's the conversation The What If U Project was always meant to start.