There are only two types of folks in business: Buyable or not.

Buyable folks are, obviously, in it for the money, and make up a supermajority. They bifurcate their world into work and non-work zones and do what they must to get ahead in the former. Much like the premise of Severance, they see a difference between what they do on behalf of a company and decisions in their personal life. They will swear they are principled and ethical, but when the chips are down, they will follow the demands of their paycheck every time and rationalize it however they need.

Unbuyable folks make decisions based on a higher power: their mental model of the world. They have deeply-held beliefs and a thoughtful structure around it that they are curious about and update. They calculate the harm or good of their decisions at work and believe it’s all the same karma. They turn down raises or jobs that will lock them into complicity with choices they oppose. The allure of wealth or lottery tickets isn’t absent, but it is tempered by the knowledge of where that leads if it’s a top priority.

My martial arts teacher has run his own school for 30 years and his wisdom on the matter cut deep: He saved for retirement early so that he could afford to have the same standards for the last black sash he bestows as the first. If every student quit due to his unrelenting standards, he’d walk away before he’d lower them for retention. He has fixed business costs like any small business owner, but he chose his priorities at the outset and refused every trend and change that would dilute his beliefs.

I am not saying that level of discipline is the bar to cross, but wouldn’t it be something if it were?

I’ve met many founders who claimed to hire folks who were “mission-driven.” In their mind, that means folks for whom the job isn’t “just a paycheck” to them, it’s aligned with why they wake up in the morning. They see intrinsic value in their work and so the paycheck is necessary to live, but not a driving motivation.

This sets up a conflict, because the founder of any investment-driven company is definitionally buyable because they already cashed the check. No matter how mission-driven any investor claims to be, they are investors first. They’re accountable to whoever gave them their money, and when the chips are down, that fear is what will determine their actions. The ex post facto rationalizations will flow freely, sound very clever, and be repeated in a sterner and sterner tone until you nod or see yourself out.

Eventually, those mission-driven folks understand the conflict and bargain that has been made. They either leave or stay for the paycheck. Now you have the worst of both worlds: Brain drain of the most relentless mission-focused and the remaining folks working for a paycheck that isn’t particularly motivating.

Over the last decade, I’ve slowly realized my intuition has carved out a middle path.

I hire folks who are intrinsically motivated. Yes, they need a paycheck. Yes, they appreciate the mission. But, there is a curiosity inside themselves they are fulfilling. They are trying to better themselves and the world in their own idiosyncratic way. They have values both deeply and lightly held, and engage with the work of considering how it’s all connected. They are never satisfied. They motivate themselves to get up every morning, and in return, I do the work of figuring out what makes them tick and ensure that mechanism gets wound often enough to keep going. It’s fundamentally a trust-based motivation that creates a level of resilience no money- or mission-driven culture can approximate.

If you didn’t know any better, you’d think I was just being too nice.

There’s some insipid part of our culture that equates suffering with progress and productivity. If you’re fully rested and not anxious or stressed, are you really committed? Or to a manager: If you aren’t extrinsically beating up your team to be better, how could they possibly improve? It’s easy, because the sorts of folks who are intrinsically motivated all have one universal truth within them: They are their own worst critic. My role is not to join & reinforce their criticism, but to direct and moderate it. When they are truly intrinsically motivated, I largely save my criticism for how they tread on the motivations of others or attempt to bend the team’s goals to serve their internal narrative. Often, they don’t even realize they’re doing it and gentle corrections are enough.

It is incredibly difficult to find, hire, & retain unbuyable workers. In my experience, it’s also the only path to a truly sustainable high-performance team. Unfortunately, also in my experience, it’s incredibly easy to take them for granted and break them.