I try to approach not to change the world, not to build cool stuff (well maybe just a little), but to genuinely help people. For a business person, this thinking is difficult and counter-intuitive.
Why do I do this? Because of my first mentor (and co-founder).
He was relentless in everything he did. I learned to stay up all night, keep calling on customers, and stay with tasks until we got somewhere with them. I remember many nights with thousands of invoices spread across the carpet, watching the graveyard shift run their machines, or scanning reports on-line, looking for clues. He wouldn’t quit and the reason was always the same, “These people need help and we can help them. So we do. Don’t worry about how hard it is or how much time we spend, it’ll all work out in the end.”
Sometimes I think that this is the attitude very successful people must have. It’s too easy to give up when it’s for ourselves, but much harder when we know that someone else needs us to get the thing done.