Why Become a CEO?

Video Transcript

"The idea of not being good at working for other people, really had to do, I wanted to do my own thing. I had my own ideas about how I wanted to do things and this was the best way to do them. I also loved the idea of putting other people together and making them work as a team, or getting us to work as a team. A lot of times there's a misconception about CEOs, is that you tell people what to do and they'll do it, and of course that is not the case. They've really got to be motivated. Everybody motivates themselves. How to put together a team that can actually accomplish it was the key for me. Well I'd been a college professor for about ten years and I'd got to the point where I'd said, I really, if I'm going to teach people how to be in business and how to do these things I really need to go out and get the kind of work experience that would allow me to do that. So I became a CEO not out of any particular need, I became a CEO as part of my, what I felt like was my career progression and what I wanted to do. Didn't have an anticipation that I would come back and be a professor in the late part of my career, but it's really been very rewarding and that experience of being a CEO and working in business is absolutely crucial to everything that I have to teach. What did I want to be? In fact in my earliest days you know I took these, earliest these tests and basically one of the things it said I should be was to be a farmer. I was going to be a chicken farmer. I had a chicken in my backyard, I had chickens in my backyard and I thought that would just be the way to go. Obviously you outgrow some of those things. Really hadn't anticipated being a college professor. I wanted to go into marketing and advertising and saw myself working with a big company like Proctor & Gamble. But as it turns out I got a PhD and went into business and I went into teaching, and really enjoyed the teaching, and then from there decided I needed to go into business and it was just, that was the inspiration. But early on I had no idea, probably like most people, I had no idea where I would end up, but I must say I'm very happy where I got to."