I used to think ambition was a personality trait.
Something you either had or didn’t.
I don’t think that anymore.
I think ambition is mostly a function of proximity. You absorb your ceiling from the room you’re standing in, the same way you absorb an accent. Quietly. Without meaning to. Without even noticing it’s happening.
Here’s what I mean.
A few years ago I had coffee with a guy named Marcus. Sharp, funny, good at his job. He ran ops for a mid-sized agency, made around $140,000 a year, and when I asked him what he thought a realistic next step looked like, he said maybe $160,000 in a few years if things went well.
I asked him why $160,000 and not $300,000.
He laughed like I’d made a joke.
I hadn’t.
Marcus wasn’t lacking talent. He was lacking exposure. Every person he ate lunch with, every person he vented to after a bad meeting, every person whose life he used as his internal benchmark, was making somewhere between $110,000 and $180,000. That range wasn’t a ceiling someone imposed on him.…
