That one small step you take today could lead to a
multi-million dollar chain reaction? That’s what happened to Susan
Wojcicki when she was 30 years old: “I had just got out of business school and
bought a house. So I needed to get some renters in order to help pay the
mortgage...”
So she rented out her garage to two Stanford students, Larry
Page and Sergey Brin, who used it to start up their new company, Google.
Susan remembers the first year, with many “late nights
together in the garage eating pizza and M&Ms, where (Larry and Sergey)
talked to me about how their technology could change the world."
They finally convinced her to join as Employee No.18 and
their first marketing manager, when she was four months pregnant. And her first
job was to relocate them all to a proper office.
Called the “Mom at Google”, Susan was the first in the team
to have a baby, and her “family first” philosophy led to Google topping the
‘Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For’ list.
The “family” grew, literally, with Sergey Brin marrying
Susan’s sister, Anne, and having two kids. Susan herself had five kids. All
while growing the marketing side of Google.
In charge of products, it was Susan who came up with the
idea of Adsense, which grew to become 97% of Google’s revenue within the next
10 years. That earned Susan the nickname “The Money.”
She then focused on video, only to find a new start-up,
Youtube, was growing much faster than Google video.
While working out what to do to compete, Susan stumbled on a
Youtube video of two boys in China lip-syncing to the Backstreet Boys. She
recalls “That was the video that made me realize that 'Wow, people all over the
world can create content, and they don’t need to be in a studio.”
Instead of trying to compete, Susan convinced Larry and
Sergey to buy Youtube, and six months later Google bought Youtube for $1.65m.
In February 2014, Susan became the CEO of Youtube, and today
she is worth over $300 million.
What began with a simple decision to rent out her garage has
led Susan on a journey that has included her being named No.1 on the Adweek 50
list in 2013, being called “The most important person in advertising” and “The
most powerful woman on the Internet” by TIME in 2015.
And for Susan, the journey is still just beginning. As she
says, “Google is fascinating, and the book isn't finished. I'm creating,
living, building, and writing those chapters.”
Now it’s your turn. If Susan can do it (while raising five
kids) you can too.
Take a step forward today. Any step. There’s no guarantee it will lead to the same
magical journey that Susan has been on. But there’s no guarantee it won’t,
either. You’ll never know until you try.
Also, relationships, connections and networking are very
important to our success stories. If Susan had just rented out her garage and
never bothered about getting along with the Google guys, big things would still
have happened without her and she’d probably still remain anonymous as we
speak. So let’s always work hard at building and keeping healthy connections,
and always with positive energy.
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