As an entrepreneur, I was once in the middle of pitching to an investor when he asked me the question: “What do you want to get out of this?” I started to repeat the financial figures that I had prepared, but he interrupted me and clarified his question. “No, what do you personally want to get out of this?”
I was shocked to find out that I actually didn’t have a good answer for him. I thought about his question for days. What did I really want? While I thought of a variety of reasons, one theme definitely emerged. I wanted to prove I was CEO material and control my own destiny, without spending my life in the politics of career advancement.
