I have often championed, “too much is just enough.” But can one be “too all in?”
To get the plane in the air, the pilot gives it full throttle. That analogy always resonated with me in the startup years of every company I have had. A healthy amount of passion is a prerequisite for business success in my view. But passion without limits, without balance, can also be a recipe for disaster. Ahh, balance. That is the Rosetta Stone to success, both personal and professional.
Regular readers of PepTalk have heard me espouse, “The Hell with controlling costs, just increase income even more.” That could be an example, or a symptom, of being “too all in.” My son, a former professional poker player, has called my type of play “maniac.” I’m pretty sure it was not a compliment on my nuanced style.
I had some older colleagues when I was young. They gave me an opportunity to move to the East Coast and run a major subcontract for building a high-rise. It was a great opportunity for me, considering my age and experience. I turned it down. I liked to think I was exercising work/life balance in not going for it. They were dumbfounded. In their experience, you did whatever the job asked for. This is a refrain I have often heard: the next generation never seems to be as all in as the older one.
I liked to think of my style as work hard/play hard. Then someone who knew me well observed that my style was more like, work hard/play harder.
In the early days of CAD/CAM dentistry, my brother was investigating opening a dental lab to digitally make prosthetic teeth. This was bleeding-edge manufacturing and dentistry. One of our team (a future business partner) offered up one of his healthy teeth for a proof-of-concept test. The rest of us looked at him like he had two heads. To me, that was too all in.
My late brother was perhaps the poster child for being too all in. He simply was over the top on everything he did. I do owe him credit for co-founding my company with me. I was only expecting to do a “deal.” He started with the idea of forming our own company. Being all in then was the best business decision I have ever made.
There is clearly something to be said for balance. The yin and yang of business is obviously a huge positive. They say if two business partners agree on everything, one of them is redundant.
There really is no simple answer to this conundrum. Of course, going all in is table stakes in the game of success. However, one needs to consider, at what cost? One’s definition of success enters into this equation also. If work/life balance is more important than business success, that certainly changes things.
Then there is Elon. The wealthiest person in the world. Going all in, all the time, on everything, seems to be working out just fine for him. ●
Steve Peplin is CEO of Talan Products
