Tell me about your vision.
What do you see for the world in regards to leadership,
in regards to your life?
You can be as expansive as you want on this.
Sure.
My vision, I'm really about purpose.
And a lot of people talk about purpose.
I take it seriously.
I think my career has been a quest for purpose.
And at first, it felt kind of random.
I was a creative person and wrote poetry.
And I studied philosophy.
And I was interested in art.
And literature.
And I don't think I ever expected to be a businessman.
Kind of felt like the accidental businessman.
But we all have to engage in the economic machine, so to speak.
Got to connect those gears, the internal gears,
with the marketplace gears.
And I found my place in tech.
And it kind of expanded from there.
So my vision is really about, and I
can do certainly a lot of details
in that long middle passage that I can talk to you about.
But what I help people with now, what I care about the most,
is helping people find and define their purpose.
Because I believe that business can be a force for good.
And we all have to work.
Most of us, in the 99%, at least,
need to work for a living.
And I'd also say most of us want to work and are meant to work.
But to work purposefully.
And as long as you're working, I feel like you may as well
be working for a purpose.
And I see a business, especially for entrepreneurs,
as an extension of themselves and an opportunity
to really leverage the power of organization,
the power of numbers of people working in concert
towards a clear, purposeful vision,
as an extension of themselves, really.
And it's all about making an impact on the world,
a positive impact on the world.
And I believe business can do that.
It's a great opportunity.
There's other ways to do it, of course, too.
You can do it through other organizations, your church,
or nonprofit, or whatever you do.
But why not do it in business?
But moreover than that, so that's
from the CEO, founder CEO's perspective.
But in terms of inspiring and motivating a team,
people want meaningful work.
And there's a lot of statistics that say the best employees,
professionals, are willing to sacrifice up
to 23% of their income.
This is according to one survey I read,
for work that is always meaningful.
That's lifetime income.
I'm willing to sacrifice nearly a quarter of my lifetime
earnings if I could be doing something meaningful.
And personally, that resonates with me,
because money has never been my primary motivator.
Now, when you don't have money, you can get desperate about it
and it can become an obsession.
But when you do have it and when you get it, you guys, OK,
well, it's nice to have.
And it certainly allows freedom.
It gives freedom.
But it's not enough in itself.
At least it hasn't been for me.
So and I think that's true for most people.
So I try to get people to think about purpose.
And it's a great starting point.
Purpose, on the one hand, and core values, on the other hand.
And then you kind of have this inside, this is the outside,
like the impact you might want to make on the world.
There's a vision there, right?
What is your vision?
Vision and purpose are not exactly the same thing.
But it's your target.
It's your goal.
And everything in between, strategy, culture,
organizational habits, whatever product or service
you deliver, the details, the features,
and benefits of whatever you're delivering,
your customer experience, your brand identity,
all need to align along that axis between core values
and vision, with purpose being the thing that kind of links
them all together.