Know Thy Passion, Know Thyself

Jeff Maurone, a good friend of mine from Villanova is currently interning at Microsoft. Recently he had the opportunity to have dinner with Bill Gates at his house. As amazing as that experience must have been there is one thing that Jeff wrote about in his blog that has had me thinking...

Bill Gates (not a direct quote):

"I'm a technologist. My brain is wired to think about software and how it should work. It's kind of my one shot. I'm not a businessman and most times I don't even know what it means to be a businessman. If you've got this one thing you do that is your passion, that's really the only thing at which you have a shot of being world class."

Now let's take this idea and apply it to the entreprenuer. The entreprenuer should know whom he/she is internally. They should know what they are capable of and what they aren't. Masking your weaknesses will spell disaster for any enterprise for your company. I know that I am not stellar at accounting or finance, so what will I do when I start a company? I will be damn well sure that I have someone that is good at accounting and finance on my team. Bill Gates is not the CEO of Microsoft. He is the Chief Software Architect. Bill knows that his weakness lies in the business end of software development. That is why he has surrounded himself with a world class leadership team that has lead Microsoft to so much success.

More importantly I think the entreprenuer has a hard time understanding that their business can't be everything to everyone. I think that this is critical when starting a business.

If you think about it, the world's best companies/brands stand for singular ideas.

Here is a list of a few from Laura Ries:

• Starbucks: European-style coffee house
• BMW: driving
• Volvo: safety
• Subway: healthy sandwiches
• Cialis: the weekend drug
• Cold Stone Creamery: customized ice cream
• Ikea: Knock-down furniture
• Silk: soy milk
• Red Bull: Energy drink
• Under Armour: athletic underwear

**Obviously there are exceptions like Proctor and Gamble and GE, but they are far and away exceptions to the general rule.**

What these successful companies produce is their passion. Microsoft produces computer software. Do you think that if they entered the furniture industry they would be as successful as Ikea at selling furniture? I don't think so.

I think that everyone needs to take Bill Gate's advice to my friend Jeff to heart: "If you've got this one thing you do that is your passion, that's really the only thing at which you have a shot of being world class."

Dont' we owe it to ourselves to be world class in whatever we do?

Comments

[Daniel Nerezov]

Hi Travis,

Nice post. Pretty surreal to be breaking bread with Bill, huh?

I take your points regarding passion, and I don't usually do this- but I must point out a possible flaw in your reasoning.

Perhaps, in your post, you are mistaking the job of the company versus the job of the founder and, then, the job of the CEO. Essentially, whilst Starbucks does "European-style coffee"

I’m putting forward that Howard Schultz's job had very little to do with coffee when he founded the business. In identifying problems, formulating solutions and aggregating resources Howard did a lot more for Starbucks, in his job as a founder, than he would have by being passionate about a really good cup of coffee.

Personally, I find that my job as a co-founder has very little to do with software development, and yet again, my job is now changing to the role of the CEO- which again is a completely different occupation to that of a founder.

So what do founders and CEO's actually do? I reckon you'd have an opinion on that ;)