What's up everyone this is Alex Lieberman co-founder and executive chairman of Morning Brew welcome back to founders journal my personal audio diary

Where I give you the business builder the tools you need to think better in order to build better

Whether that's building a business a team or a new product today. I am talking about the double-edged sword of being a striver and a perfectionist

Let's hop into it

So it's actually talking about this with our executive producer this morning that

Probably the most cliche interview question on planet earth is

What is your one big weakness? I feel like everyone asks that in interviews and oftentimes we say how people just give fake strengths as weaknesses and

probably the most cliche

Fake strength is when someone says to you my big weakness is that I'm a perfectionist that generally gets

The eye roll the common reaction to that answer is come on. That's a fake weakness tell us what you are

Actually bad at so that we know what to expect when you come join our company

But what I'll say is the more I go through my career and understand my own psyche and also understand other people that I work with within morning brew and outside of the business

The more that I believe being a striver and a perfectionist is actually a legitimate weakness if

You don't understand it properly. So let's just talk about me for a second

Like many of you. I'm a really competitive person. I take myself seriously

probably too seriously and

I expect perfection and success in everything that I do from work to life to my intramural soccer game on Wednesdays

And I've recently spent some time thinking about why this is why is it that I'm never satisfied?

Why is it that I expect perfection in what I do and oftentimes those expectations while lofty are sometimes unrealistic?

And I think there's three main reasons I

Think part of it is due to my upbringing, you know

I grew up in a Wall Street household my dad worked in sales and trading mom worked in sales and trading grandpa worked in sales and trading

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