Max Webster speaks about passion, the best advice he can think of, and the absence of shortcuts to success.
If you are not passionate about what you do, you need to stop doing it because commitment and satisfaction are the best recipe for success.
According to Max Webster, an entrepreneur passionate about boosting solar energy, there is no shortcut to success so the best way to grow is by accepting the possibility of failure and gathering the best out of each experience. The residential energy market in the United States, says the co-founder and director at Bright, is around US$170 billion annually.
In an exclusive interview with CEO North America, the politics graduate from Yale shared his experiences, his failures, and the best advice he has ever received during his young and successful career as an entrepreneur.
Chief Executive Officer: What is the best advice you can give to a young entrepreneur?
MW: “I would say that if you do not really believe in the mission, if you are not enjoying the process intensely, or if you are doing it thinking about money, there is not going to be much future in your work. Success comes when you truly are passionate about what you do, otherwise any success that you do achieve will be fleeting and will never be able to fulfill your intentions and dreams.”
Chief Executive Officer: What is not true about being an entrepreneur?
MW: “The entrepreneurial world has very little glamour, everything seems very sexy and glorious when you start or in the life of corporate geniuses, but it is not; my first two start-ups crashed (Weave and Niko Niko). Reality is you learn along the way. The challenges are going to be many and difficult, there’s a lot of ‘donkey work’ in the early stages, everyone knows how to enjoy success but lifting a company from the floor is neither easy nor glamorous. When we started, we did not have money, we did not have things, we slept on the floor of a room because we had no place to go, but across all of this, you cannot lose heart.”
Chief Executive Officer: How do you manage to balance the pressure of work and personal life?
MW: “I rap, that’s my other passion, I also meditate and play basketball. You really should recognize that getting caught up in the vices of the entrepreneurial and the business world is very easy, especially when things are going well. What keeps me focused is being aware that we are all going to die one day, so, in that sense, I can just say that if you are not enjoying what you are doing today, you need to stop. “
Chief Executive Officer: What does the future hold for you and your plan of solar energy with the incursion of new technologies?
MW: “In my opinion, as far as solar energy goes, people are not going to be thinking: ‘hey, I want to know more about solar energy’; they are going to want to know how to make their home an installation that works completely on solar energy in the most effective, ecological and cheap way, so I believe we are looking at a future where companies will have to expand their services because they will be connected to everything.
