Success

Success is something I enjoy. It does not scare me when I see it coming. I welcome it and have fun with it. I think that is the biggest thing I see as a key factor of success. It is a flow of momentum and energy and resources coming your way that you have to have fun with, let it wash over you and not get attached to it as it goes up and down. Be a happy swimmer in multiple currents, that’s the thing that has helped me succeed a lot of the time. Some people actually take momentum, when it starts to hit, as a problem. Momentum is part of the solution, and it has to be welcomed in incremental stages, with it’s progress announced as if it were a royal procession coming through town.
 
Success these days also means thinking about your impact. In my earlier days in business I only worried about three things: more money coming in faster at higher margin. Sometimes I did not want a financially sustainable business, but rather to ride the market's momentum to a timely sale. That was the only other variable I applied when I measured success. Now I think about environmental and social impact first, actually, and use business to get toward those goals. I am also learning to live more easily with philanthropy and realize that giving can be regarded as an input: a reliable resource that can play a part in the success of a social venture.
 
Creating venues for people to give and invest alongside each other...The planet is in the sort of pickle that it requires assembling all the resources at hand in order to create a thrivable future. So success to me is a broad set of partnerships, from discovery phase to cooperation and then coordination that puts our collective best effort toward the goal of a fecund future that is more than sustainable, more than just a viable baseline, to a future in which we all thrive.