Driving Your Own Train
Two kinds of people in the world: Those who drive, and those who ride
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Years ago, I was standing at a critical cross roads trying to make a big decision. I was considering leaving my job at a very established investment firm and joining as an early employee at an unproven startup. I talked to a number of people about the decision, but one conversation stood out to me more than any other.
A friend of mine who had made a similar decision, jumping from an established firm to build his own firm, gave me an analogy that would from then on shape my perspective on the types of work one can do.
"There are two kinds of people in the world. There are people who are building trains, and there are people who are riding the trains that other people have built. Right now, you're riding the train. The question is, when are you going to get off?"
I've written before about my decision to join Contrary. In some ways, this was me working towards building my own train. Granted, I give all the credit to Contrary's founder, Eric Tarczynski, for truly building this train from the ground-up. But my decision was driven by my desire to start helping to drive the train I was on.
The less control you have over your life, the less you're driving your own train. And countless people can spend their whole careers riding other people's trains, and that's fine. But for many people, there is a drive. An unquenchable thirst to control your own destiny. To get out from under the parameters of an established ecosystem.
Another way I had it described to me was as a pyramid. Most organizational hierarchies are structured like a pyramid. Lots of people at the bottom, a few people at the top. And a lot of people like that structure, because the bottom is capped. But that, by design, means the top is capped too.
To fully uncap the top, or in other words open up the maximum potential, you also have to open up the bottom. You have to open up the possibility that you might fail. That your train might not run. And that's when you can start to really answer for the direction of your own life.
This week, I had the chance to sit down for a podcast where I talked about a lot of things, but this framework of deciding when to drive your own train, and control your own destiny, was the part of the conversation I enjoyed the most. Hope you like it. You can check out the full episode below.
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