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The Monk encourages us to consider how we spend our time, not our money. Marrying our values and passions to the energy we invest in work, it suggests, increases the significance of each moment.
The Monk encourages us to make work pay, not just in cash, but in experience, satisfaction, and joy.
Following your passion is not the same as following your bliss.
In truth, The Monk is not primarily a business book; that is, it is not about buying low and selling high, but rather about creating a life while making a living. It is about the need to fashion a meaningful existence that engages you in the time and place in which you find yourself. It is about the purpose of work and the integration of what one does with what one believes. The Monk is not about how, but about why.
When we first left Mount Popa, I wanted nothing more than to get to my destination, but now I don't have the slightest desire for this trip to end.
“But isn't that a problem, Lenny? Your projected sales of $100 million in three years amount to what share of the Internet slice of that market?”
“With 10 percent of the market? It doesn't foot.”
The principal use of the plan comes at the beginning, I explained, to show that the founders are intelligent, capable of structuring the business concept and expressing a vision of the future. Later the plan can help track problems that may reflect on the startup strategy itself.
VCs invest first and foremost, I explained, in people. The team would have to be intelligent and tireless. They would need to be skilled in their functional areas, though not necessarily highly experienced. Moreover, they would need to be flexible and capable of learning quickly.
except for one thing: their bets build the future in remarkably tangible ways.
He was looking for a large valuation so he could raise his financing by selling the smallest percentage of the company possible, thus maximizing his ownership. The Valley calls that minimizing “dilution.”
the value of the company plus the new money, would be more like $12.5 million.
Future rounds will be much easier if you are seen as having positive momentum.
“Is that your personal exit strategy?
“I don't think so, Lenny.”
I incubate startups. To that end, I provide the scarcest commodity of all, leadership and experience. I help the people build their ideas into successful businesses. Neither an angel nor a consultant, I support entrepreneurs as a kind of junior partner, a full member of the team, an owner and a decision maker, not a hired hand. I invest my time, and, in return, I receive an equity stake in the business. With that stake, I think like a team member, and sink or swim with the founders.
My role is to keep my head out of the cyclone and provide insight, direction, and stability.
“There's nothing wrong,” I said, “with cashing out and making a lot of money—unless those ‘other things’ you intend to get to are what you'd rather be doing all along.”
but I can't muster the energy for a company whose founders never hope to accomplish anything more than making some bucks. By setting your expectations low, you almost guarantee mediocrity.”
Lenny's eagerness to charge ahead was laudable. It certainly matched the way the Valley now works. Over the last several years, with more money, more deals, and less attention paid to any single company, a new investment model has taken hold. Fill each startup with rocket fuel as fast as possible and blast it into space. The ones that fly, fly, and if the rest of them blow up, c'est la vie.
there are two issues.
first faces all Web rocket ships. We're awfully early in this market to be declaring the first-movers the victors. Our perspective is too short, and it
colors the lessons we think we'...
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Ultimately being right, or better positioned, may be more important than being first.
“is that, in spite of all that's known about your products and market, you still face some big unanswered questions.”
When too much money is pumped too fast into a startup, there's no room for mistakes.
The dreaded “restart”—writing down a company's value and raising new money around a fresh direction for the business—
means all the previous work was for naught.
Stay small and remain flexible for the time being, so we can keep close to the market, learn from prospective customers, and afford to take some missteps. You have to be able to survive mistakes in order to learn, and you have to learn in order to create sustainable success. Once the market is understood and the product is fully developed, then move fast and hard. If, on the other hand, we discover with this approach that there's no market after all, we won't have wasted truckloads of money.
It comes down to my realization over the years that business isn't primarily a financial institution. It's a creative institution. Like painting and sculpting, business can be a venue for personal expression and artistry, at its heart more like a canvas than a spreadsheet. Why? Because business is about change. Nothing stands still. Markets change, products evolve, competitors move into the neighborhood, employees come and go.
There's always the “son of Lenny” to threaten all you hold dear. Business is one of the last remaining social institutions to help us manage and cope with change.
DESPITE MY ENERGY and passion in Providence, I held onto the notion that eventually I would need to focus my life on something “serious.”
Get serious, I thought. Get a profession, build a career, establish yourself, and be successful. Then you can do what you want. I was living the Deferred Life Plan.
That was the rational, analytic side of the argument, and I took it seriously.
All the people I met there, passionate young people, truly believed they were changing the world, not selling computers.
What would it take for you to be willing to spend the rest of your life on Funerals.com?
But knowing what we require to be willing to do something lifelong provides invaluable self-knowledge.
It's not, as I've learned from my own experience, that the deferred life is just a bad bet. Its very structure—first, step one, do what you must; then, step two, do what you want—implies that what we must do is necessarily different from what we want to do. Why is that the case? In the Deferred Life Plan, the second step, the life we defer, cannot exist, does not deserve to exist, without first doing something unsatisfying.
But why not do hard work because it is meaningful, not simply to get it over with in order to move on to the next thing?
But I hadn't considered that she might be at odds with Lenny's lifeless mission or that their original idea might have been more compassionate and compelling than Lenny now let on.
The chance to work on a big idea is a powerful reason for people to be passionate and committed. The big idea is the glue that connects with their passion and binds them to the mission of an organization. For people to be great, to accomplish the impossible, they need inspiration more than financial incentive.
The business model can and should change over time, as the world changes. Ultimately, when the big idea was lost, the market and Apple's employees could no longer find a reason to support Apple's business. Their fanaticism faded to ambivalence.
Business conditions are forever changing. You need to reconsider your strategies and business models constantly and adjust them where necessary. But the big idea that your company pursues is the touchstone for these refinements. Ditching the big idea in order to deal with business exigencies leaves you without a compass.
But I gradually began to internalize Campbell's frame of mind, and some of my own personal values, long subordinated to the bottom line, began to resurface. I couldn't argue with Bill's results: What appeared to be a sometimes inefficient process was creating extraordinary success. Our customers liked us. They valued our products. Our partners respected and trusted us.
In addition to a sense of professional failure—this was the first time I had ever blown a deal—I felt I had let down my company. I had let us down. It was our deal, and I dropped the ball for everybody, including myself, in the process.
BUSINESS, I told Lenny and Allison, is about nothing if not people.
First, the people you serve, your market. Then the team you build, your employees. Finally, your many business partners and associates. Sever the chain of values between leadership and the people translating strategy into products and services for your customers, and you will destroy your foundation for long-term success. The culture you create and principles you express are the only connection you will have with each other and your many constituencies. It may not be Allison's utopia, but it was a far cry from Lenny's soulless machine.
Management and leadership are related but not identical.
It complements and supports but cannot do without leadership,
I wanted a role full of creativity, where inspiration was more valued than perspiration. I was intrigued by the digital “content” business, the emerging idea that computers could deliver useful information and engaging entertainment, not just applications.
