Tim Westergren
This morning I wandered over to the Mariotte Hotel to view a general PRSSA session. There were a few big names in the PR world that atteneded including June Cotte and Mary Turnbull, but nobody grabbed my attention better than the founder and Cheif Strategy Officer of Pandora, Tim Westergren. While I am not a Pandora user myself, I have heard nothing but good things about it, and surely after today I will begin to use it.
The story behind Pandora is nothing short of inspirational and really anyone could use its story for motivation. This is a company that Tim started with aboslutely nothing and grew it into a multi million dollar project. In the Beginning stages Pandora had 50 employees who worked without pay for 2 years. Tim explained to the audience that he maxed out 11 credit cards in order to get the company moving. Pandora almost went out of business several times but the pandora team and pandora listeners never gave up on keeping it alive. Tim and his team worked from dusk until dawn to get Pandora launched. It takes an incrediable amount of work and dedication to get something like this started.
Tim expressed that one of the most effective things he did to grow the company was personally answer every email that anyone ever sent to him about pandora. He knew the importance of customer relations and while the company did not have a PR department in the beginning, Tims personal communication with customers is what helped the company grow, and because social media did not exsist when Pandora started, word of mouth was essentially the ticket to their success as a company.
In the end of the interview Tim answered a few questions including one from a lady who asked about the feeling of being a millionarie. This was a fairly stupid question but Tim answered it with great wisdom. He expressed this idea using a statistical analysis that once someone makes about 75,000 dollars a year they are as content as they can be with money In otherwords, moneys ability to make someone happy definately has limitations. Obviously the amount differs between people but his point was that he is more happy with the fact that he enjoys doing what he does everyday than he is content with being a millionaire. What motivates him to get up everyday is to keep pandora running. He made a point that really stood out to me. If your main concern with a project or idea is money than forget about it. If you don't have substanital passion about what your doing your chances of succeeding are very slim. This goes hand in hand with one of my own goals, which is to find a job that I love so much that I would do it even if I was'nt getting paid.