How to be happy and successful: Find the intersection of the spheres

“There is no path to happiness.  Happiness is the path.”

      -Buddha

Because I often speak in person and in my book about using meditation as a tool for self awareness (“clear the mind to see clearly”), and intuition to find your path (“follow the clues to reach the treasure”), I’m often asked for advice on how to be both happy and financially successful.

 I’m also asked the same question, though in a different form, by entrepreneurs about their startups.  “How can my startup be both financially successful and feel like we’re doing something meaningful/unique/making a difference?”.

 It turns out that my answer to this question is the same for both individuals and for startups.

A Tale of Two Extremes

First let’s look at two extreme pieces of advice that I ‘ve often heard given (and followed):

Extreme Advice #1: “Do what you love and the money will follow.” 

This is great advice (and if I’m not mistaken, was the title of a bestseller long ago) in theory, up to a point. 

But what happens when you start to do what you love and the money doesn’t follow?  The reason there’s still a self-help industry is because it isn’t always so easy to make a living  doing just what you love.

I was reading a book by Dannion Brinkley recently (there’s a throwback to the nineties, when Dannion was a bestselling author, famous for having an NDE after being struck by lightning) and he said that one vision he brought back from the “other side” was a form of spiritual capitalism. In this vision, everyone would do work that they loved and earn enough income from it to make a decent living.    Again, a great vision, but one that doesn’t always play out in the real world the way we’d like. 

 This is also true for startups/entrepreneurs as well, though it can seem paradoxical.

 Some of the most successful startups did in fact start off doing something they believed in, and the monetization came around much later (think twitter, facebook, and Google).  But these are also extreme cases; unfortunately, more often than not (let’s say 9 out of 10 times), simply focusing on your vision without taking the time to fit it to the market is also a recipe why most startups go out of business.

 Too often I see entrepreneurs holding on to a vision of what they want their startup to be, but that vision isn’t producing results and isn’t generating enough cash to stay as an on-going concern, and they don’t admit it until it’s too late.

Extreme Advice #2: “Do what the market needs.  Find meaning elsewhere.”

In a way, this is great advice to be financially successful, but it leads to a whole different kind of frustration.  In the work world, many people have jobs that do not involve something they are passionate about and provides no meaning whatsoever – it’s simply a way to earn a paycheck.

For a startup, this means doing whatever a customer is willing to pay for. While this may lead to a successful company financially in the short term, as an entrepreneur you an feel like you’re “selling out” your vision and you’re not likely to make a big difference or feel passionate about what you’re doing. 

I’ve been in startups which started out as “fun” and “innovative” but ended up being slaves to the almighty dollar – every decision that was made had to do with “will it improve our financials or not?”.  That’s no fun either and you end up wanting to "quit" your own startup and go do something "fun" and "innovative" again!

The Middle Way: Find the Intersection of the Spheres

After reflecting on this question for most of my adult career, I have come to the conclusion that people are only happy and financially successful when they can find the intersection of three spheres. 

Sphere #1: What you love to do, what you want to do. 

Suppose you love writing. Or music.  Or acting, and you decide you want to pursue these things full time.  One thing to think about is that something that we “love” as a hobby may not be so “enjoyable” if it is the sole source of our income – it turns from a “hobby” to “work”. 

Still, it’s useful to create a list of the things we “want” or that we would be happy doing.  For a startup this is our “ideal vision” of what the world might look like with our product/service, without regards to the financial question.

As I mentioned before, focusing too much on sphere #1 often leads to unacceptable results in our careers and our startups but it’s a great starting point.

Sphere #2: What we are good at? 

Creating a list of what we are “objectively” good at is not as easy as it seems.  This is because we are often so concerned with sphere #1 and sphere #3 that we don’t stop to reflect on ourselves.  In fact, I often recommend asking someone else for this list, and we are more likely to get objective answers.

It’s important to be honest with ourselves here.  As an extreme case, suppose I want to be an NBA basketball player – but the truth is that I’m only 5’6 and not very athletic and objectively not that good at basketball.   In fact, I’m a much better computer programmer than I am basketball player. Or for that matter, an actor.  Orson Scott Card wanted to be a stage performer and “loved it”, but he realized he wasn’t that good at it. In fact, the was a much better writer than he was performer.

If you aren’t good at working with people, should you really pursue a goal of becoming the top salesperson (or multi-level marketer) in your region?  How many of us set goals that aren’t appropriate for either our skillset or our DNA (here I don’t mean our actual DNA, I mean our energetic patterns and what we are intuitively drawn to - Steve Jobs would call it "fate, destiny, karma"). I’m not trying to be negative here, I’m saying that each of us has unique talents and aptitudes.

In his bestselling book, Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell says that it takes about 10,000 hours to become an “expert” at something.  The thing he ignores though is that people aren’t interchangeable; we are drawn to different things and good at different things naturally.   I have a friend who has spent this many hours rock climbing. She’s an expert.  Would I be an expert too if I spent 10,000 hours rock-climbing?  Maybe, but most probably I wouldn’t make it to 10,000 hours because I’m not that interested in it, and not naturally drawn to it.  You might say it’s not in my karma.

This is equally true for startups. I’ve noticed that founding teams in different startups have different DNA (again i'm not talking about actual DNA here, i'm talking about aptitude and experience). As a result, certain business models are just easier for them to follow. Interestingly, they aren’t always the business models that they “choose to follow” because they aren’t being honest with themselves..

As an example, in one of my startups, we were very good at delivering developer tools that we sold for thousands of dollars and customized for many thousands more.  Why? Well, it turns out because we were developers ourselves and really understood this market.

At one point someone (I think it was me!) came up with the bright idea to build an end user tool and sell it for $49 or so.  We went ahead – and while we did an OK job, building end users products wasn’t really what we were good at – the product looked very “developer-y” and we couldn’t provide real end user support.  The point here is not that you shouldn’t experiment with different business models or products, it’s that you need a clear mind to see what you are good at and then play to your strengths.  

VC's will often tell you to "play to win".  But you can't "play to win" if you're playing to your weaknesses.

Sphere #3: What the market is willing to pay for..

This brings us to sphere #3.  If we are good at something, there’s a good chance that someone will pay us to do it, and more importantly – keep paying us to do it!

This may seem obvious, but many people set their sights on doing something that no one is willing to pay for, or they get paid for it once and despite the fact that they aren’t very good at it- they keep thinking that others will keep paying them for it.

The important point here is to define the “market” appropriately.  In your career, it might mean local job market – it might mean any company anywhere willing to hire someone full time – or it might be much more specific: “online e-commerce companies that are willing to pay consultants for”.

For a startup, the way you define of market is crucially important.  For example, if you are freemium model in video games, is your market that’s going to pay consumers or advertisers?  This is an important distinction.  You might find you have a free app that millions of people will download, but no one is willing to pay for it – that’s where the advertisers come in.

Usually, an entrepreneur can figure out what’s in sphere #3 by meeting with potential customers.  Very often, they won’t be ready to buy what you are selling, but if you listen closely, you might hear them say something like: “well, yes, that’s nice, but if you could do X, I’d be willing to pay for it right now.”

By listing items in all three spheres, you can start to look for the “intersection of the spheres”.   Seems obvious? In theory maybe, but in practice, it’s anything but, which is why I recommend you look to people that know you (or your startup) well and ask them what is in sphere #2 - what are you really good at?  If you can do this, you can find the sweet spot that can propel your career or your business to the next level, and make you (and/or your employees) happy in the process.

Like the mysterious "one thing" in the movie City Slickers, I can't tell you what lies in the intersection of the spheres.  

That's for you to find out.

The Curious Case of Steve Jobs: Intuition and the Entrepreneur

“Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”

- Steve Jobs, Stanford Commencement, 2005

Wow it’s been a long time since I’ve written an entry (the last once was written just before I sold my iPhone gaming company, Gameview Studios, to DeNA) in 2010. I’d like to re-start my blog with two topics that are dear and near to my heart: following your intuition and the death of Steve jobs.

Steve’s death on October 5, 2011 caused a literal outflowing of emotion, analysis and opining: hundreds, perhaps thousands of pages have been written in the last month alone since his death. And that’s not counting Walter Isaacson’s 600 plus page biography.

Some of these focused on his achievements at Apple and Pixar, some on his tumultuous personality, some on his “insanely great” products like the Mac and the iPhone, some on how he ran Apple after his comeback, some on the impact he’s had on (count them) at least five different industries, some comparing him to Walt Disney and Henry Ford combined.

So...what’s left to say?

For me one of the most inspiring (and overlooked) aspects of Jobs’ career and philosophy was his reliance on his own intuition even in the face of the “noise of others’ opinions”. I haven’t seen much written on it, so using his own words as much as possible, here goes:

Most writers about successful business persons like to try to reduce what they did to a set of pithy “principles” you can follow to be just “like Mike”. With Jobs, I think that’s pretty much impossible. It’s like asking for the “step-by-step formula” for how to “think different”! If it could be reduced to a formula…well you get the point.

Intuition vs. Analysis

Jobs attributed much of his success to his ability to follow his own “inner knowing”, even when analysts and the “experts” disagreed. He was quoted as saying he hated focus groups because consumers “don’t know what they want until we show it to them”. Instead, he insisted on having an “intuitive” feel for when a product was “just right” and when it felt “wrong”.

This is pretty much the opposite of what you will learn from business schools (even more progressive west coast ones like Stanford) about building products and companies. It’s even different from what most venture capitalists and startup gurus here in the valley will tell you - which is to analyze a market, make sure the analysis confirms that the market is “big enough”, then interview the people in that market to find out their needs. It’s kind of ironic that one of the biggest icons of Silicon Valley would disagree with the way business is being done here.

Tim Cook, who replaced Jobs as the CEO at Apple, talks about following his own intuition when he decided to join Apple after meeting with Jobs. “Engineers are taught to make a decision analytically but there are times when relying on gut or intuition are indispensable.”

Where did Jobs get this mindset from? A big part of his reliance on intuition vs. analysis came as a result of his own search for truth. When he was young, he dropped out of Reed College (again the opposite of what logic would tell you to do if you want to be a successful entrepreneur) and followed his own intuition down several notable paths.

The first path, his quest for enlightenment, led him first on a trip to India chasing some guru, and later transformed into his study of Zen meditation here in the Bay area. “The people in the Indian countryside don’t use their intellect like we do, “ said Jobs. “They use their intuition instead, and their intuition is far more developed than in the rest of the world.”

He concluded with: “Intuition is a very powerful thing.” (src: Isaacson's biography).

Continuing his search for enlightenment when he came back to the US in the 1970’s he experimented with Zen meditation (an interest he kept up for the rest of his life) and mind-altering drugs (which as far as I know, he did not keep up for the rest of his life). Now I can’t speak for LSD (since I’ve never taken it), but I can vouch that meditation can be indispensible for learning about different states of mind and teaching you how to follow your own intuition.

Steve Jobs said: “If you just sit and observe, you will see how restless your mind is. If you try to calm it, it only makes it worse, but over time, it does calm, and when it does, there’s room to hear more subtle things- that’s when your intuition starts to blossom and you start to see things more clearly and be in the present more. Your mind just slows down, and you see a tremendous expanse in the moment.”

According to his longtime friend, Daniel Kottke, who’d known him since his college days: “Steve is very much Zen. It was a deep influence. You see it in his whole approach of stark, minimalist aesthetics, intense focus.”

Zen influenced Steve Jobs in other ways too – including his appreciation of a minimalist ethic that rubbed off on his insistence that user interfaces and products be as simple as possible. When creating great products like the Macintosh and the original iPod, Jobs talked about having this intuitive knowing when something had met this ethic of simplicity and when it could be improved. Although he wasn't always right, he was right way more often than he was wrong.

Connecting the Dots: One thing leads to another

Of course, it’s not always easy to follow your intuition when it’s telling you something that’s different from what others tell you should “logically” be done. Jobs own life is a good example – ranging from his decision to drop out of Reed to what looked like a very poor investment decision to fund Pixar, a money-losing operation that he bought from George Lucas for $10 million in the eighties, and then continued to fund for years (to the tune of $50 million of his own personal money), until they came out with Toy Story in the nineties and became the landmark success story we know about today.

I think it only happens if you can have confidence in yourself and your own ability to find what’s right for you. Following your intuition often means follow your own path, even if you can’t see exactly where it’s taking you.

Jobs often gave an example from the time when he dropped out of college. He said that once he’d officially dropped out, he could take the classes that he “wanted to take” rather than the ones that “they were requiring him to take”, showing a streak of his habitual disrespect for authority.

He saw a flyers on campus for a calligraphy class, and decided to follow his intuition and take this class, where he learned about proportional fonts, serif vs. non-serif fonts. Jobs would say about this time: “It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating. None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life.”

Later, when it came time to design the Mac, he insisted that there be “fonts” of different types, rather than the usual stale green fonts that were popular at the time. Again in his own words:

“And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, it's likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do.”

This was perhaps the most important example of what Jobs referred to as “connecting the dots” – when something in your life unexpectedly connects to something at a far later date, but you are completely unaware of the influence it’ll have at the time.

I think that most successful entrepreneurs benefit from “connecting the dots” – bringing together seemingly unconnected experiences into a single whole that somehow is more than the sum of the parts. How do you know? You don’t – you have to have the courage though to follow your intuition.

I’ll end, as I began, with Steve Jobs in his own words from the now famous Stanford speech:

“Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.”