How Did Brad Jacobs Turn Self-criticism Into Fuel?

David Senra says Brad Jacobs turned self-criticism into fuel: he used to beat himself up when he missed perfection, and he moved that negative inner voice into some of the most positive energy Senra has been around, across eight separate billion-dollar companies. Senra's lesson, from talking with him and from watching him, is that a founder can start on negative fuel and move to a more generative source.

Senra is working on that shift in his own work. The work itself can fuel the drive: building, solving problems, learning, and making a product or a whole company better. That loop compounds. It does not run out the way an old goal can, such as not wanting to be poor, and then needing money, praise, or status to keep going. He learned the loop from Jacobs.

Senra says his own inner monologue is nicer now, and the change came faster than he expected. He still critiques a podcast he does not like, and he can still be mean about it, but the criticism is more generative than it used to be.