I had a chance for a short private call with the CEO of my new company as reward for winning a internal competition recently.
As I was really new in the company - just 44 days with the company, I thought long and hard of what to talk to him about.
Then something came up to my mind: ask him what drives him to bring the company from a start-up, to NASDAQ listed company, and still keep going after 21 years.
The logic of success is largely similar: it mostly have to do with a combination of motivation, determination, discipline, and perseverance.
"When the going gets tough, the tough gets going" but what drives you to be the tough that gets going, rather than the fuck-this and give up?
I still remember that when I started finding a job 7 years back, I set money to be my passion because I didn't have passion for anything else.
7 years later, I achieved some success with money in the sense that I can buy most of what I want without any severe financial worries, I have a car, I have a rather big apartment in a rather good location.
But what's next?
You can get faster cars and bigger apartments, but there are always someone with a faster car or a better apartment than you.
The race in money seems pretty meaningless because it's never ending.
Coming back to my call with the CEO, I wanted to find out why would he spend so much effort in achieving what he achieved.
Clearly money isn't the goal for him, he probably already have more money than he will ever spend for the rest of his live.
The content of his answer was quite standard:
• He felt that he has a great team, and it is the people that he felt it was his responsibility to groom and take care of.
• He felt a sense of mission that he had the destination in mind, and he wanted to reach it.
• There were definitely several challenges and obstacles along the way, but in retrospect, you will always realize that they were really minuscule problems.
But what was truly intriguing is that I actually felt that he truly believe that this is what he wanted to do.
I realized that this believe is something I always lacked.
When you talk to someone who strongly believe in something, your realize that it is not a concept of choosing whether to take things up, it is just something that is gospel truth to them and they just know they have to do it.
I never truly believed in anything.
I thought that life was meaningless, and whatever thing you do doesn't matter. People just choose something (children, career, business, etc) and devote meaning to it.
But this conversation revealed that this may not have been a choice, you don't just adopt something and make it your baby, it's more like you know it in your gut that it's what you want to do.
All the things that I've achieved stemmed from survivalism: I needs to get them to sustain my lifestyle.
But after sometime, I realized that I will just keep chasing a more expensive lifestyle and try to sustain that lifestyle - this is so pointless.
The conversation actually doesn't really help me at all. I had never felt strongly about anything at all, and I don't supposed I'd fill that emptiness in any foreseeable future.
The question I asked him was what drives him, and I got his answer.
The actual answer I was hoping to get is actually for a different question: what drives me?
I really have no idea.
