The Special Ingredient

Were there instances where you looking back, you wish you had done that harder work you're talking about and made a pivot in time? Were there times when you felt like you perhaps didn't make that pivot soon enough?

Yes, absolutely, nd I think it would be a rare leader, a rare CEO, a rare founder who wouldn't agree with me.

Can you give an example?

Yeah, as I said if you are building something... people who build successfully are people who have a vision and believe in that vision. And that's critical to starting a company, and it's a key ingredient to the success of any company, I believe, is that vision, and the ability to sell that vision to recruits, to investors, to customers, to the market. If you are so devoted to that vision, so good, so devoted to that vision that you're able to sell it to that extent.

Trust me, the downside is it's really hard to see the faults in that vision. Nobody wants to believe their baby is ugly. Right. Yeah. And sometimes you just have to sort of sit up and say, "OK, this isn't working as well as I thought it should work." Or, "OK, it's working, but not quite as well as that guy or gals thing is working, and I need to take corrective action or else I'm gonna lose it." As I said, I think it's a rare executive who hasn't had to face that fact at some point in their career.