## Metadata - Author: [[Benn stancil|Benn Stancil]] - Full Title:: Ambition, Then and Now - Category:: #🗞️Articles - Document Tags:: [[Career tips|Career tips]], - URL:: https://benn.substack.com/p/ambition-then-and-now - Finished date:: [[2024-06-29]] ## Highlights > Rather than yelling at her support team, Korey should’ve been focused on figuring out why Away was getting [4,000 customer service requests](https://twitter.com/vcstarterkit/status/1203186414327721989) a day. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j1g72pn4nb869wdrdfz68wqb)) > what was Korey still chasing? Why did Away need to raise [another $100 million](https://techcrunch.com/2019/05/14/away-packs-on-100m/)? Why did it need 50 new stores and [to build “a community”](https://x.com/SquawkCNBC/status/1129334145505796097) for people who bought suitcases? ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j1g77hfzp7bnzv5rpsc8jex5)) > We don’t value people by where they are. We value them in the same way we value our companies—by how fast they’re rising. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j1hcah4t7crjph55p8c3356r)) > Standing on the shore, your old pond—the pond where you did your life's work, in which nothing seemed more important than being a big fish—suddenly looks like all the other ponds you used to care so little about. [It looks distant](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCRZZC-DH7M); foreign; trivial. From that vantage point, you don't mourn leaving it; you mourn having spent so much time there. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j1hcn3wxqh6kzqvteqpaxmbq)) > *You can manufacture ambition*. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j1hcpp6r0jxghagav7fx5c53)) > Whatever we imagine that existential ambition will be then, we we can make it our day-to-day ambition now, but not without sacrificing our current idols. Because there will be a moment when all have to ask ourselves if we got what [we wanted from this life](https://wordsfortheyear.com/2014/07/07/late-fragment-by-raymond-carver/), and the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing us he'd come for us after we die, and [not when we're still living](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44982/richard-cory). ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j1hct8t1hbdv8traw5f7gc43))