I was successful, yes, but driven by fear

The other day I had a conversation with someone about potentially working with me. When we got to some of the core of what was going on for them, a part of their story reminded me so deeply about the motivation in my own previous life and sometimes still my life today: being driven by fear.

A few years ago, when I was working as the co-founder of Buffer, we were becoming more and more successful, conventionally speaking. Every year, we added millions more to our bottom line revenue, with thousands of new customers. Close to 100 people worked there and still do today. But for me, after some time, working on that company was no longer fun. 

The reason I realized later was simple. It was because I no longer chose to work there. I felt like I had to. It’s as if someone made me do it. Although it was the very company I started. So the only person that “made me do it”, that was me. I didn’t have any support at the time of a mentor that would hold up a mirror to me and ask me simply “What do you want?” and when I would answer with “Well, I don’t want this!” to reply with again “Then, what do you really want?”. 

I didn’t have the chance to reevaluate my dreams. To most people that have become successful in life, this happens. The biggest thing that holds them back from living the life they want is the success they created for themselves in the past. It’s a shocking paradox. But when we get so entangled with the “have to’s” and the “should” in the day-to-day weeds of running a company, it sucked all the joy right out of me. And I had no idea how to get it back, especially because looking at our bank account and our balance sheet, all I could see was more 0’s being added over the years. I was confused. 

Today I know better (sometimes!). I know that through the years of working on that company I had switched my fuel source. I went from being fueled by joy, possibility and potential to be fueled by fear. Fear to lose it all. And the bigger the success, the bigger the fear to lose it all became. But when we’re fueled by fear, no good things can happen from that. We’re only practicing the fear. Every action we take in the business will come from a place of fear. And every person we interact with will be getting in contact with our fear one way or another. It’s like a virus that spreads and soon enough, especially when you’re the boss like I was, that becomes a culture. A culture of fear, not to lose what you created. Who wants that? Nobody! Yet few people know how to break that cycle. 

That is how I learned to get a mentor, a coach, a friend that will look me dead in the eye and say “Leo, you don’t look like you’re having fun, what’s going on?” That is the only thing that has shifted things for me. Accountability to someone I trust only wants the best for me and has a deep well of compassion inside themselves. These days I’ve switched back to the fuel source of a life that I love: Joy, enthusiasm, purpose, meaning, play, presence. Soon enough, in due time, if I’m not careful, the fear will creep back in, it’s like a law of physics. This time around though, I’ve come prepared, prepared for the human, mammalian condition that predicts we will only survive in groups with others where we’re truly seen, can be heard and be vulnerable. With coaches, therapists, friends around me that will look me in the eye and say “Leo, what’s driving you these days…really?” to find the courage to acknowledge my fear and then take the actions to come back to the life I want to live.