“A taste of freedom can make you unemployable.”
— Naval
“Management is telling people what to do, and leadership is making them want to do it. And I think leadership is one of the core, core things that you have to drive in an organization. You just have to inspire people to want to do the work. But it can’t be fake.
It has to be a true motivator rolled into their capabilities and their own objectives — what they want out of life. So you do have to take the time to listen to what those people want, and then figure out where there’s an overlap in what you want done, and then inspire them to go do it.
There’s a famous Antoine de Saint-Exupéry line. So he has a great line, which goes something like, ‘If you want to build a ship, don’t just gather the men, and issue orders, and cut the wood, and start the fires. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.’
So if I’m recruiting someone, I’m always pitching them on what I think is correct — it’s honest; it’s authentic — which is that startups are just a much better way to build businesses, to live your life, and much more fun to work in than large companies. You’re not a cog in a machine. You have a lot more autonomy. You have a lot more fun. You can make a lot more money. And yes, in the short term it’s grueling, but in the long term, once you’ve done startups, it’s very difficult to go work for a big company.
Once you have worked with a lot of autonomy or worked for yourself, it’s very hard to be employable in a traditional sense. I think one of my most popular tweets was, ‘A taste of freedom can make you unemployable.’ And that’s kind of what I mean, especially for talented and skilled people who are self-motivated.
And not everyone is that way, but if you are one of those self-motivated, high-agency people, when you’ve been free, you become unemployable. It’s like a kid who’s been homeschooled becomes unschoolable. They’ve just tasted freedom. And you’re not going to do your best work when you’re not free.”
