This past week I was invited to speak to high school students at Lakeland High School and Skyline High School where I spoke about building a business, qualities of success, and college admissions. It was a great experience that brought me back to my roots, where I spent thousands of hours coaching high school students looking to break into top colleges.
As I scripted my presentation, I was conscious of the fact that I would be addressing a different crowd, high school students who were searching for that seed of interest as opposed to college students who were fostering those seeds. I realized that even as college students, we are often confused about what we can and want to do with our career, let alone life. So as I crafted the speech I wanted it to be (i) highly invigorating and (ii) planting a seed. I scratched my ideas of business models, cloud-native businesses, and disruptive technology and focused on the core, the mindset necessary to succeed regardless of the idea.
No matter where I began writing, all roads led to the importance of pursuing passion. There will be too many internal and external obstacles from doubt, embarrassment, guilt, etc that founders deal with on the journey of building a business. Thus, the ones that last are those that find a genuine passion in (i) the problem they are solving and (ii) the users they work for.
As Jeff Bezos said…
“I strongly believe that missionaries make better products. They care more. For a missionary, it’s not just about the business. There has to be a business, and the business has to make sense, but that’s not why you do it. You do it because you have something meaningful that motivates you.”
I told the students, why am I in it? I want to increase the bar of human excellence, and I believe we are witnessing something very special unfold over the next 30 years centered around the interconnectedness of humans and technology. I have found a passion. You become a missionary when you forget that you are working yet your friends keep asking, why are you working so much. There are larger fish to fry.
