• As a newly minted billionaire, Google CEO Sundar Pichai says that embracing discomfort is key to personal and professional growth—a mantra that helped him advance from a little-known product manager to CEO of the $2.3 trillion tech giant. While climbing up the logical paths up that ladder may seem right, he tells Gen Z that listening to your heart will help you find your true calling. 

The path to success is never easy—even for the world’s top leaders. In fact, for Google CEO Sundar Pichai, there were times he felt that stinging feeling that other people in the room were better than him. But he assures Gen Z that feelings of discomfort are all part of the process.

“At various points in my life, I’ve worked with people who I felt were better than me,” Pichai recently told Lex Fridman’s podcast. “You want that feeling a few times, trying to get yourself in a position where you’re working with people who you feel are kind of like stretching your abilities is what helps you grow.”

“Putting yourself in uncomfortable situations, and I think often you’ll surprise yourself,” he added.

For Pichai, this mantra has helped him climb the ranks at the tech giant after starting out as just a product manager in 2004. Within a decade, he had caught the eye of cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin before being named CEO in 2015. And while he admits there is always an element of luck to success, he encourages Gen Z to do what they love—even if it seems irrational at first.

“You’re thinking about what you want to do, your brain is telling you something. But when you do things, I think it’s important to listen to your heart, and see whether you actually enjoy doing it.”

Success in the workplace centers around the people

Finding the right people to work with is not only important for personal growth, Pichai added, but also making sure work gets done, something he said has been part of his secret for maintaining Google’s growth into a multi-trillion-dollar giant.

“You find mission-oriented people who are in the shared journey, who have this inner drive to excellence, to do the best, and motivate people and, and you can achieve a lot that way.”

The drive for excellence at Google may also mean the willingness to work far beyond the 9-to-5, according to Sergey Brin. In an internal memo seen by The New York Times, the cofounder encouraged the company’s AI-focused workers to be in the office “at least every weekday”—with 60-hour workweeks being the “sweet spot of productivity.” And while Pichai has publicly said in the past that he anticipated the future of work to be focused around flexibility, the AI arms race has put pressure on tech giants to be ahead of the game.

Still, amid the high-stakes environment, Pichai told Fridman he prefers staying calm as a manager, believing that the best employees are usually the first to know when they’ve messed up—and overreacting can just make matters worse.

“At times, you’re working with people who are so committed to achieving, if they’ve done something wrong, they feel it more than you do, so you treat them differently,” Pichai said. “Occasionally, there are people who you need to clearly let them know like that wasn’t okay or whatever it is, but I’ve often found that not to be the case.”

Fortune reached out to Pichai for comment.

Striving toward the billionaires club

Though Pichai has been the leader of one of the biggest public companies in the world for just shy of a decade, he’s only now just joining the billionaires club—a far cry from that of Brin and Page, who are among the top 10 wealthiest people in the world, according to Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index. Their net worths are about $163 billion and $174 billion, respectively. Compared to Pichai’s $1.1 billion net worth.

While there is no perfect path to emulating the success of Google, Page told college graduates in 2009 that they should think about solving problems that can ultimately allow them to be lazier: 

“Technology, and especially the internet, can really help you be lazy,” he said to University of Michigan students. “…Find the leverage in the world, so you can be more lazy.”

Much like those who graduated into the Great Recession, today’s young people are facing their own set of daunting challenges, thanks in part to AI reshaping the job market. However, Page isn’t a believer in giving up. 

“Overall, I know it seems like the world is crumbling out there, but it is actually a great time in your life to get a little crazy, follow your curiosity, and be ambitious about it,” Page said. “Don’t give up on your dreams. The world needs you all.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

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• Denny’s CEO Kelli Valade isn’t afraid to admit she’s always working to be better—and she values that same humility in job candidates. Recognizing your weaknesses and asking thoughtful questions, she says, can set you apart in an interview. It’s a mindset shared by Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, who got his start as a Denny’s dishwasher and credits the journey teaching him hard work and humility.

Landing a job in today’s market can feel like finding a needle in a haystack. Not only do you have to find a role that you’re interested in—and are qualified for—but you also have to craft an application, resume, and cover letter that’s interesting to both humans and AI. But once you land the coveted interview, that’s when the pressure is on. 

Luckily, even during an era of AI-assisted interviews, there remain ways to stick out from the crowd.

When asked what her red flags are in hiring, Kelli Valade, CEO of Denny’s Corporation, noted that she asks applicants a few critical questions.

One of the signs Valade looks for comes at the end of the interview, when she asks: what questions do you have for me?

“Have a thoughtful one or two. You don’t really even have to have more than that,” she tells Fortune. “Any more than that, actually, it’s too much.”

In fact, it often does not matter what the questions are, but the fact that you do ask shows you did your homework and are seriously interested, Valade adds. 

(However, Shark Tank star Barbara Corcoran advises candidates to ask, “Is there anything standing in the way of you hiring me?”)

She also is sure to ask: what would they say makes you most effective at what you do? Typically, candidates are pretty well equipped to answer that question, Valade says.

“Then I ask them, what would make them more effective?” she explains. “Which basically is saying, what are your weaknesses? And there you’d be amazed at how many people can’t answer that, or would say, ‘I’ve not thought about it.’ And so really what you’re saying is, ‘I’ve not thought about my weaknesses.’”

The 55-year-old admits that she herself is a work in progress, but what’s helped her stand out throughout her career is not shying away from admitting her areas of improvement. It’s something she hopes to see in her employees, too.

From Denny’s dishwasher to leading the world’s biggest company

Now that you know tips for getting hired at Denny’s, you may ask, why work at the restaurant chain?

There may be no more notable member of Denny’s employee alumni than Jensen Huang. The now billionaire CEO of Nvidia started his career at the diner as a dishwasher at just 15 years old—and it’s experience he credits for teaching him about hard work.

“I planned my work. I was organized. I was mise en place,” Huang told students at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business last year. “I washed the living daylights out of those dishes.”

“No task is beneath me,” he added. “I used to be a dishwasher. I used to clean toilets. I cleaned a lot of toilets. I’ve cleaned more toilets than all of you combined. And some of them you just can’t unsee.”

And while his time at Denny’s came well before Valade’s tenure, she says they are now friends today—and the billionaire continues to pay homage to the diner. His LinkedIn notably only includes two employers: Denny’s and Nvidia. He also made an appearance last year at Denny’s franchise convention and partnered with the company to launch a special edition “Nvidia Breakfast Bytes.”

“Start your first job in the restaurant business,” Huang said in 2023. “It teaches you humility, it teaches you hard work, it teaches you hospitality.”

From hostess to CEO

Valade started her career in the restaurant space at just age 16, when she landed a hostess job at TJ’s Big Boy. Decades later, she began climbing up the corporate ladder in the human resources world—with the dream of one day becoming a chief people officer, not necessarily becoming a CEO. 

So when she was tapped to jump from head of HR to chief operations officer at Chili’s, self-doubt was her first instinct.

“I didn’t think I could do that at the time,” she recalls. “I thought, I think you’re looking for the wrong person here. I don’t know. My first instinct was, I’m not sure I know how to do that.”

While the feeling is natural, she adds leaders—and especially women—should self-reflect on whether you are holding yourself back from a greater potential.

“Push yourself and challenge yourself on why you may not feel like that,” she adds.

After later rising to brand president at Chili’s and CEO of Red Lobster, Valade was tapped to become Denny’s CEO in 2022, centering her career on two of her favorite things: people and pancakes.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

© Courtesy of Denny's Corporation

• YouTube sold to Google in 2006 for $1.65 billion, with cofounders Chad Hurley and Steven Chen splitting over $650 million worth of stock shares. And while their wealth increased exponentially with the acquisition, estimates put today’s value of YouTube at $550 billion—a 333x increase. Few could imagine YouTube’s eventual media dominance at the time, making it a classic example of the high-stakes decisions founders must weigh. 

YouTube may have started as a site to share home videos, but now it’s one of the most powerful platforms in the world: From entertainment to advertising, it’s spawned billion-dollar careers and birthed a global creator economy, turning individuals like MrBeast into household names.

But when its founders sold the popular video platform to Google for $1.65 billion in fall 2006, not even they could have predicted just how massive it would become—or how much more they could have made.

At the time of sale, each cofounder—Chad Hurley, Steven Chen and Jawed Karim—received millions of dollars worth of stock: Hurley, YouTube’s CEO at the time, received shares worth some $345 million by the time the Securities and Exchange Commission documents were released a few months later, according to The New York Times. Chen its CTO received some $326 million worth and Jawed Karim, who left the venture early to go back to school, got $64 million worth.

“This is great,” Hurley said in a video posted when the sale was announced. “Two kings have gotten together. The king of search, the king of video have gotten together. We’re going to have it our way.”

YouTube’s sale price to Google is just a fraction of its estimated $550 billion value today, according to a MoffettNathanson research note reported by Variety. That’s a 333x increase (unadjusted for inflation) from nearly two decades prior. While it’s difficult to pinpoint exactly, had Hurley and Chen received the same percentage of the sale today as they did in 2006, each could have walked away with more than $100 billion each.

Hindsight is 20/20 when it comes to selling

Last year, YouTube brought in some $54.2 billion in revenue, and this year, it is expected to surpass Disney to become the largest media company by revenue in the world, Variety reported. YouTube’s record-setting successes highlight how Google was able to overcome issues that the video platform’s founders struggled with early on—including operating losses and copyright lawsuits—and its paid off dividends.

But YouTube’s masterminds are far from the only business leaders that have seen their company soar after exchanging ownership.

During the first two weeks of Apple’s existence, the company’s lesser-known third cofounder Ronald Wayne checked out and sold his 10% stake—netting him $800 at the time, plus $1,500 to forfeit any claim to the company for good. However, his 10% share could now be worth between $75 billion and $300 billion, thanks to the company’s now $3.2 trillion market cap.

These stories also exist outside of tech. For example, the founder of iconic pasta brand Chef Boyardee sold the company in 1946 for $6 million. Over the decades, the company exponentially grew its operations, expanding to multiple lines of canned and microwavable goods. And just this year, the brand, including its over 500-person strong factory, was sold to private equity for $600 million—a 10,000% increase in value.

And in the case of Chef Boyardee and YouTube, it’s unclear whether such massive growth would have been achieved without the backing of larger corporate owners. For the founders, it means weighing up selling early and leaving future billions on the table—or holding on and risking the company never reaching its full potential.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

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• OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is an artificial intelligence pioneer, but the billionaire founder remains a big believer in physical note-taking. It’s a practice he leans on while trying to solve complex business problems, saying he’s “not found anything better to do than to sit down and make myself write it out.” Note-taking is something that fellow titans like Bill Gates and Richard Branson also embrace.

Technology has slowly made taking physical notes a thing of the past, to the delight of Gen Z who have long embraced jotting down ideas on their phone or leaning on voice memos.

However, its complete demise may not happen anytime soon, at least if OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has anything to say about it. Despite being the leader of the company behind productivity-enhancing chatbot ChatGPT, the billionaire remains a staunch believer in writing physical notes. Especially when the going gets tough.

“I think of writing as externalized thinking. I still, if I have a very hard problem, or if I feel a little bit confused about something, have not found anything better to do than to sit down and make myself write it out,” Altman said on the How I Write podcast.

“I’m a big believer of, I take a bunch of notes, and then I clearly rip them out so I can look at multiple pages at the same time, and I can crumple them up and throw them on the floor when I’m done.”

Note-taking is a practice that Altman maintains has helped him become a better thinker while building his $300 billion AI giant—and as well as wanting to crumple the notes up after, he has some more highly specific requirements when it comes to his note-taking habits.

Sam Altman’s note-taking habits

Altman said this week at the Federal Reserve that he keeps his notes private as a way to organize his thoughts—but his process is far from just scribbling. His note-taking practice is rather meticulous, and it centers on having the right supplies. This includes having a pocket-size spiral notebook with a hard front and back and that can lie flat on a table, he told podcast host David Perell. The paper also must feel good to write on.

His pen choice is specific, too: either the Uniball Micro 0.5 mm or the “Muji 0.36 or 0.37 in dark blue ink” (though he may be referring to the Muji 0.38).

Only then can he get to work thinking through tough ideas. Each time he sits down to write, he comes away shocked at the power of this seemingly simple exercise.

“I find it astonishing how much writing just for yourself … helps clarify what you actually think, helps sharpen stuff in a way that for me—and I think for a lot of other people—is somehow impossible to do, just like thinking carefully on a long hike,” he said on the How I Write podcast.

“It’s harder to hide really messy thinking when you have to actually write it down and stare at it.”

And while business leaders may prioritize clear communication first and foremost—Altman said that clear thinking is even more important—and one of the best ways to achieve that is by writing things down.

“Clear communication is very much less important, and very much downstream, of actually clear thinking … Unclear communication is a symptom of unfocused thinking, for the most part.”

Fortune reached out to OpenAI for comment.

The habit shared by billionaires like Bill Gates and Richard Branson 

Sam Altman isn’t alone in his analog approach—his habits are also shared by many fellow billionaires, including Bill Gates and Richard Branson.

The Microsoft cofounder said he believes handwritten notes are key for information processing.

“You won’t catch me in a meeting without a legal pad and pen in hand—and I take tons of notes in the margins while I read,” Gates posted on LinkedIn last year.

Similarly, Branson, the cofounder of Virgin Group, said it’s hard to find him without a way to write down his thoughts.

“I go through dozens of notebooks every year and write down everything that occurs to me each day. Some of the ideas contained inside end up turning into reality, and some don’t—but they are all noteworthy,” he wrote in a 2017 blog post.

“An idea not written down is an idea lost. When inspiration calls, you’ve got to capture it.”

Without note-taking, his companies would not be the same, he added. 

And while he admitted he isn’t opposed to digital notes, what matters most is that some form of note-taking is happening: “It doesn’t matter how you record your notes—as long as you do.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

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