Gavin de Becker

You know, when you swim upstream, you put enough current there and you're staying in the same place.

And so the times in my life when I thought it must be this way, it has to be this, this is the only way, I was wrong.

I was wrong, including hiring.

A dear friend of mine told me the story of hiring a CEO for his company, big company.

And the guy said, I'll take the job.

And they negotiated everything.

And then the guy said, you know, I'm going to go to work for Pepsi-Cola.

And I'm sorry.

And my friend got on an airplane and flew to the hotel and waited in the lobby of the hotel where he knew the guy was, caught him in the lobby and said, don't go to work for them.

Go to work for me.

I'll change the offer in the following way.

I'll add this equity.

And he succeeded.

And he got the CEO he wanted.

And three weeks later, had to fire the fucker.

So basically, when the whole universe says no, everything you want is downstream.

Now, you probably have some, you tell me, do you have some resistance to that idea?

I'd love to hear the context, but by the way, that doesn't defeat my argument because fighting for something is not the same as swimming upstream.

You know, swimming upstream is you know which way this river is going.

Yeah, and so you asked what I would tell my kids is that everything you want is downstream.