THE STARTUP CHAT

[0:00:01]

Steli Efti: Hey everybody, this is Steli Efti.

[0:00:03]

Hiten Shah: This is Hiten Shah today we’re going to talk about a story that Steli experienced and that we’re both going to share more about. So go at it.

[0:00:15]

Steli Efti: I think it’s an essential question, which is the question of like, what makes you truly come to life at work and why are you working? And I was at a dinner recently, somebody at that dinner there were a bunch of very successful entrepreneurs and one person at that dinner asked that question to the entire table. And at first people started answering that question in I think kind of surface level way. Well, I really enjoyed my coworkers. I love my customers, I really like doing new things. It’s kind of very surface level. And the guy that asked that question interrupted the first person that answered the question and said, no, no, no, no. Just think about last year, think about one or two times that you were most passion, most excited, most alive at work. What were those moments and what do they have in common? What’s the essence of what’s driving you to work? What’s making you come alive at work, not all the surface things the really deep rooted essence of what really drives you. And that changed the answers quite dramatically. Like people started becoming … First people started getting introverted and like really starting to reflect a lot more before answering like just knee jerk. People started going huh. They started being much more thoughtful and taking a lot more time thinking carefully through this before answering it. When it came to me, and what I want to do is I want to share my answer. I’m dying to hear your answer Heaton. And then what I’d love is to hand the mic to our audience, our listeners and have them share their, like take a moment and have them think about this and then share it with us. So here’s my answer, right? I had to think about this a little bit and I think what I discovered, what the essences of what drives me to work, what makes me really come alive is change. And change in twofold. The best moments at work to me are moments where I change, I change my mind, right? Or I change the way I do something. So if I have always had an opinion of how something has to be done or what the right strategies about something or just overall a principal that I had, the bigger it is, the bigger the change, the more alive I come, when I change my mind. If something happens that fundamentally changes my mind about a big topic or a big belief. Those are the days that I’ll remember. Those are the moments I feel most alive because I feel like I’m growing. I feel like holy shit, I really couldn’t do everything that I’ve done up until this point is now changing because I have this huge shift in mindset or in believe or in strategy in whatever. So if I change my mind, it’s the best day I can have. Second Best Day is if I help somebody else change their mind, right? Change their mind, change their life, change the way they approach something. So if I play a small part in having somebody else have like a really big aha moment where they change the way they think about things, change the way they feel about things, change the way they act about or work on things. I think change is really the thing that drives [inaudible] Me changing is the most exciting thing to be honest selfishly, and then helping other people change. That’s the second most exciting thing. That’s the essence that everything I enjoy has in common. I’m dying to hear what the answer is for you Heaton.

[0:03:31]

Hiten Shah: Yeah. I really like your take on like going deeper and thinking about change and making it about change after you thought about it. I think you have an advantage here where you’ve had an opportunity to think about it longer-

[0:03:46]

Steli Efti: To think about it yeah.

[0:03:47]

Hiten Shah: -than I have which is great. So yeah, I think like if I were to really point out what really matters to me, it really does have to do with the ability to essentially create the organization in such a way where the people are happy and really productive and working well together. And the moments that I can think of that makes me the happiest about the business have everything to do with my ability to basically do that and watching the company do that or anything I’m involved. That organization become created and then the whole process around that. Of the people working together and then creating processes and them growing and learning things. And so to me it’s a lot more about those things. And kind of watching that progress in that journey happen. And just being able to get better every day. So there’s moments where I’ll talk to somebody and we’ll come up with something that moves the business forward just because we talked about it and they’re able to go do something about it or we’ll hire somebody and it’s a great hire or currently like to hire product people I have a process and I feel like I’m finally good at it after so many years [inaudible] the type of product people that I like hiring. Other people might not care about the process so I don’t share it or talk about it. But it excites me because it enables us as an organization to make progress. So if I were to pick a word like you picked change, I would pick progress and forward movement. But that comes from this idea that I love seeing the thing grow. Whatever the thing is, I love seeing it grow. And I know that it takes people to get it to grow. So the way that the people work together, knowing that the right people are working on the right things, all those kinds of things are really what get me going.

[0:06:19]

Steli Efti: I love it. Alright change and progress, beautiful. Well, we want to hear from you, right? We want you to do … Well first we want you to take this episode and we made it intentionally short, right? So typically you would spend 15 minutes with us. Now we’re like, we’re going to end at like seven to eight. So you have a few extra minutes, right? Well, what we want you to do is just pause and take a minute or two and think about this. What really makes me come alive, what really motivates me, drives me to work. What are the best moments I have at work and what do those moments have in common. Then when you get to an answer, I think hopefully it’s going to be serving you well in the future, but also since we’re in this together, why don’t you just send us an email, steli@close.io hnshai@gmail.com and share that thing with us as we shared our thing with you. I think it’s really useful to share these insights with the world and we want to hear … The more we hear from you the more excited we get about sharing more of our insights and our thoughts and ideas on the podcast. So think about it right now, share it with us and with the world if you like to, and we’ll hear you very soon.

[0:07:28]

Hiten Shah: See Ya.

[0:07:28]