From the outside, confidence often looks like a prerequisite for success.
Build companies. Make big investments. Take board seats. Lead organizations. Walk into rooms and make decisions when millions of dollars are on the line.
Do it long enough, and people assume you must possess something they don’t.
Paul Hirschbiel has a different explanation.
“I am totally afraid of the world, totally insecure at my core, and I want people to like me.”
That admission came after a career that would suggest almost exactly the opposite.
Hirschbiel spent decades in technology and venture capital, backed entrepreneurs, served on Dell’s board and eventually turned much of his attention toward building organizations and supporting entrepreneurs in Hampton Roads.
The insecurity didn’t disappear along the way.
In some ways, it fueled the journey.
“I did that all with being a really insecure little kid inside,” Hirschbiel said during a recent conversation on The Fervent Four Show.
There is a tendency to imagine success as a cure.
Get the promotion. Build the company. Make the money. Earn the recognition.
Eventually, confidence arrives.
Except maybe it doesn’t.
Maybe some of the same internal forces that make people question themselves are also the ones pushing them to prepare more, build stronger relationships, keep learning and chase the next challenge.
The more interesting question becomes what happens when there aren’t many conventional milestones left to chase.
Hirschbiel readily admits he’s “terrible” at retirement. But his explanation for why reveals how his motivation has changed.
He still needs to accomplish something.
Just not necessarily for himself.
“I have to feel like I’m accomplishing something for someone,” he said. “Not just accomplishing to make more money or whatever, but accomplishing something for someone that’s gonna make their world or this world a little bit better place.”
That’s a different scoreboard.
Earlier in a career, progress is relatively easy to measure. Revenue. Employees. Investments. Titles. Returns.
Later, perhaps the better measurement is impact.
Hirschbiel doesn’t know exactly what his next chapter looks like. He has spent years working in early childhood development, investing in entrepreneurs and helping build organizations supporting Hampton Roads’ business community.
Now he wants whatever comes next to matter without consuming his life the way previous chapters did.
And he remains curious enough to believe there will be something next.
That may be the more useful way to think about success.
Not as some destination where insecurity disappears and ambition is finally satisfied.
But as an evolution in what those forces are pointed toward.
The voice telling you to keep going may never completely shut up.
The opportunity is deciding what — and who — you keep going for.
