Leadership and Purpose
I saw this piece on LinkedIn from Ryan Allis. Since it’s relatively short, I’ll paste it in entirety below.
This is Sergey Brin’s $450M yacht.
He got so bored sitting on it that he stepped off and went back to creating things again.
He once said retirement sounded like studying physics in cafés.
Then he tried it. It didn’t stick. He felt off.
So he returned to work and threw himself into building Gemini. He later said staying retired would have been a big mistake.
I felt a smaller version of this after my $169M exit.
Time off is great. For a while. Then you miss having real problems to solve.
Money brings comfort.
Building brings structure.
Even a $450M yacht can’t replace that feeling for long.
I want to add a third level to Ryan’s point. One that I believe is much more important than “Building brings structure.” Here’s my new order of things –
Money brings comfort
Building brings structure
3. Helping brings joy and change.
I want to skip over the first two as not really being that important. Sure, they’ll set you up for #3, but the whole point (I believe) is to do something with the returns from your money and building efforts.
For example—invest in things that will clean the earth, help those less fortunate than yourself, and otherwise take courageous actions for the betterment of humans.
I rarely see folks who have accumulated great wealth sufficiently do something positive and selfless with it. Bill & Melinda Gates, Warren Buffet, and MacKenzie Scott are notable exceptions.
We should begin to set expectations that with “money” and “building” comes privilege and the responsibility to help other humans, particularly for those with great wealth!
Stay agile and helpful, my friends,
Bob.