Success Won’t Come Until You Know What You Want
Your biggest hurdle might be you. Let’s make sure it’s not.
This week in the Teaching Startup Newsletter, I answered a question about the challenge of hiring in the post-pandemic job market. While that answer covered a few potential reasons why finding talent has become so competitive and how a startup might address those challenges, in this post, I want to expand a little more on just one of those reasons.
It’s about an entrepreneur’s secret weapon: Freedom.
My first job out of college was one of the more highly-coveted placements available — a suit-and-tie role with a successful consulting firm. The firm had their own giant glass building not far from a big city downtown, a lucrative bonus and retirement plan — they paid for my move, even found my apartment for me and paid my security deposit.
I had high expectations. But I hated that job, right away, partially because of the suit-and-tie, but mostly because I had zero freedom, zero autonomy, and zero say in most matters.
See, that prestigious and successful consulting firm was already successful for a reason. They had developed a way of doing things that worked — most of the time — and when their methods didn’t work, the opportunity cost of trying something new ate into…
