Staying Motivated on the Startup Rollercoaster with John Driver

Intro: Welcome to The Daily Bolster. Each day we welcome transformational executives to share their real world experiences and practical advice about scaling yourself, your team and your business.

Matt Blumberg: Welcome to The Daily Bolster. I'm Matt Blumberg, co- founder and CEO of Bolster, and I am here today with John Driver. John is the chairman and CEO of Lynx Technology. He's also an independent director on several companies and nonprofits. John, welcome to The Daily Bolster.

John Driver: Thank you, Matt. It's a pleasure to be here.

Matt Blumberg: All right, so here's my question for you today. One of the things I always say about entrepreneurship is it's full of highs, it's full of lows, and frequently, you get those two things right on top of each other.

John Driver: Right.

Matt Blumberg: So my question for you is, what is your key technique for staying motivated and for keeping yourself and your team focused and sane when you're on that rollercoaster?

John Driver: Right. Well, I think that one of the easiest things is to keep yourself and your team focused on what you're doing and how you're doing it. However, I think the most important thing to start with is to recognize why you're doing this. Why did I start this company? Why did these people join my organization? Why do these investors provide me with funding? And knowing the why can help you when the what and the how start to change, which they inevitably will. The why can bring you back and keep you motivated and remind you why you're getting up early in the morning and why you're renting a car at 11:59 PM in Peoria from budget. Why am I here? It's important to bring you back to that light, Matt.

Matt Blumberg: How much of that do you think is the stated purpose of the organization or vision of the organization? How much of that is just personal as an entrepreneur? Why did I start a business? This business? Is it both? Is it one more than the other?

John Driver: Yeah. I mean, you can certainly... And I think it's worth the time to write these things down. It can be a mission. You can go through that process. Sometimes missions gather dust on a strategy deck on a shelf, but I do think it's important for you as the leader to live that belief and that why, in terms of your behavior and your decision- making, how you present yourself. Because I think a lot of it being an entrepreneur and a CFO founder is you're transferring belief to the people that you're talking to all the time. You're transferring confidence, you're transferring belief. And if you don't have it, it's not going to get transferred, and if it's not transferred, you don't get that multiplying effect of a strong team that wakes up, jumping out of bed instead of dragging themselves out of bed.

Matt Blumberg: So it's almost saying it to yourself so that you can say it to your team.

John Driver: Yes, absolutely and I think you can't spend enough time getting to that why. Why am I doing this? Verbalizing it, thinking about it from different angles, so that it becomes naturally, so it not only it becomes in how you inspire people to move forward, but also in pragmatic ways of when we have a big decision to make, does this decision fit inside the why or not? Is it outside of those guardrails or not? It can save a lot of time and effort. If you know your why, it'll keep you focused where you need to be.

Matt Blumberg: And here's the tough follow- up question, I totally get when you're on the bottom part of the rollercoaster to regroup, get inside your head.

John Driver: Yes.

Matt Blumberg: We're doing this again, okay, great. Do you also do that when you're at the top of the rollercoaster when things are incredibly well?

John Driver: Absolutely. And I think that it has a multiplier effect when you are feeling good about yourself because you're like, " Hey, it's working. These are the things that we thought that we believed in that would happen, they're actually happening." And I actually think it gives you more momentum. It gives you more proof points as to the why being worthy, frankly. So it can be an accelerator and it can help you move to that next level that you've been trying to push through, so not just to get out of the troughs, but also to ride the waves.

Matt Blumberg: I love it. All right, and so for those of you who are listening to this podcast on Spotify or Apple, as opposed to watching it on YouTube, John has, over his right shoulder, a yellow index card on his bulletin board that with Blue Ink says, Believe, just like Ted Lasso, so John Driver, thank you for being here today and for bringing a little bit of Ted Lasso into the conversation.

John Driver: Everyone needs to see that show, at least the first season.