Don’t let “success” get in the way of living a life that maximizes your impact and happiness.
“Do you really want to devote your life to the single-minded pursuit of a particular goal where you have a less than 50 percent chance of achieving it, and where you’ve left no room in your life for things that will actually make you happy?” -Chris Yeh
The Cheat Sheet:
- How do you deal with the psychological challenges of entrepreneurship?
- Learn the importance of great relationships — personal and professional — to happiness and success (and how to build them).
- How do you find meaning in your work and life?
- Discover why self-awareness and self-improvement are the keys to living a fulfilled life.
- See what it’s like recruiting, managing, and retaining great people during a fierce war for talent.
- And so much more…
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Chris Yeh is an entrepreneur, angel investor, and veteran of the ’90s dot-com bubble. He is the co-author, along with Reid Hoffman and Ben Casnocha, of the New York Times bestseller The Alliance: Managing Talent in the Networked Age.
In this episode of The Art of Charm, we talk with Chris about how he balances the strains of a busy work schedule with external pursuits that complete his routine for the big picture of a fulfilling and satisfying life. We’ll also get to find out what his most recent project, Allied Talent, is all about, and how entrepreneurs who can’t afford his usual consulting fees can still bend his ear for advice through drivetime consulting.
More About This Show
If you ask Chris Yeh what he does, he’ll tell you his mission statement in life is to “help interesting people do interesting things.” And while that may sound like the vague filler some greenhorn fresh out of university would use to pad their resume, Chris Yeh is anything but inexperienced. He’s the VP Marketing for PBworks, co-founder and General Partner of Wasabi Ventures, and has been working with high-tech startups since 1995 — wise enough to be prepared when the dot-com bubble burst in 2000.
He was the first investor in — and interim CEO of — Ustream.TV, and he’s helped start numerous other companies, including Symphoniq Corporation, TargetFirst, and Juno Online Services and FarSight Financial Services (divisions of D. E. Shaw & Co., L.P.).
He’s an active angel investor and advisor to a wide array of startups ranging from network equipment makers to vertical search engines. He is also the founder and Chairman of the Harvard Business School Technology Alumni Association and the author of the popular blog Adventures in Capitalism.
Oh, and he somehow managed to get two bachelor’s degrees from Stanford and an MBA from Harvard along the way (which you’ve guessed already if you’ve read this far).
When the dot-com bubble burst in 2000, Chris was prepared — because he saw the writing on the wall and predicted its coming well ahead of time. And while he was mostly safe from its aftershock, he was sympathetic toward those around him who weren’t so lucky.
“In 2001, I was here in Silicon Valley,” says Chris, “and I remember I would just sail along the 101 freeway. No one was driving anywhere. Everyone was out of work. And I remember thinking in some ways this is kind of fun, but then I thought, you know what? That whole thing where everyone’s out of work and people are miserable? It…does not make up for the fact that I can drive on the freeway without a traffic jam.”
He watched the less fortunate around him making rash decisions after the crash, but he had a different attitude. “I looked at the situation and said, listen, the party’s over,” says Chris. “Everyone can pretend to themselves that things are going to come back, but they’re not…just plan on the fact that things are going to suck, but be ready to start again because even then I knew it’s when times are bad, when money isn’t available, [that’s] when it’s the best time to start a company…if you can afford it. You have less competition, you have less things to be distracted about. You don’t have a party to go to every night — you can just work.”
Chris points out that a lot of today’s great Internet companies — like Facebook and LinkedIn — were started during the period just after the dot-com bubble crash. Sometimes it just takes a shakeup in the market to force the adaptations that stick.
But for people involved in such a shakeup, the perceived importance of work life can often overshadow that of a personal life. Chris reminds us that maintaining the balance between the two is crucial — otherwise, what makes working hard worthwhile in the first place?
“Do you really want to devote your life to the single-minded pursuit of a particular goal where you have a less than 50 percent chance of achieving it,” asks Chris, “and where you’ve left no room in your life for things that will actually make you happy?”
It’s tough when you’re in a town with a very single-minded work force. If you grew up in Detroit just a few decades ago, being involved in the auto industry was an all-important qualifier (and if you weren’t somehow tied into it, you were seen as a freak). Silicon Valley is similar today with tech, entrepreneur, and startup culture, just as Los Angeles has been the epicenter of the entertainment industry for almost a century.
“When everyone’s really focused on one thing,” says Chris,” it’s very easy to get caught up in it and just assume it’s the right point of view for you…for us, who are living in this fish bowl, if you will, this sort of echo chamber, everything gets viewed through that lens…it’s so seldom that I hear people actually speak about what else actually matters to [them].”
Listen to this episode of The Art of Charm in its entirety to find out why great relationships are important on a professional as well as a personal level, how to cope with the psychological challenges of entrepreneurship, what it means to find meaning in all aspects of your life, and if getting an MBA is worth it for you in your industry of choice (according to Chris and Yoda, the Dagobah system’s most wise and famous resident).
THANKS, CHRIS YEH!
Resources from this episode:
The Alliance: Managing Talent in the Networked Age by Reid Hoffman, Ben Casnocha, and Chris Yeh
Allied Talent
Wasabi Ventures
Chris Yeh Drivetime Consultancy
The Art of Charm bootcamps
You’ll also like:
-The Art of Charm Toolbox
-Best of The Art of Charm Podcast
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