Kind Folks Finish First

Chapter 3Reset Your Destination

What do you stand for?

The months leading up to that fateful day at that rest stop on the New Jersey Turnpike were filled with anxiety. An uneasy feeling in the pit of my stomach I couldn't shake. Even before my rest stop epiphany, I had an innate sense that something needed to change. I couldn't keep going like this.

So I'd sought out a coach to help me take some different steps in life. Emmanuelle Skala, one of the great revenue leaders in startup land, had suggested I reach out to her coach, Jim Rosen.

We got on our first video conference, and Jim came on the screen and we got to chatting. He innocently asked me, “What do you stand for?”

My mind went blank.

“Making money?” I said.

“That's not enough,” he said. “What do you stand for besides making money?”

I didn't have an answer. And that's when the panic started to set in. If I didn't know what I stood for, how could I build something great? What will it be about? Who will it be for? What was I even doing with my life?

It's not enough to stand for “making money.” In fact, it doesn't really answer the question in the first place. Making money is the output of building something wonderful. It's not prescriptive. It's ultimately empty and means nothing.

You make money when you build something that reflects who you are, what you stand for, and your values. All of that needs to come from a place of joy and fulfillment. Money is the natural outcome of that process in regulated capitalism (the most ...