“Later that week, on the plane home, Ross wrote me a scathing eleven-page confidential report. He called my "$2 billion by 2020" vision "statistically impossible" and "ridiculous," and listed my blind spots as a leader.
"Charity: water is a shop of 15 people, but a team of exactly one. You," Ross wrote. "You control everything, You even run everything. You are the product design guy. The merchandising guy. The fundraising guy. The message guy. Probably even the check-signing guy ... Metaphorically, if you're still in the club biz, you can either be the bartender or running the show ... You can't mix the drinks and run the whole club."
Ross said I needed to start thinking like a CEO, which meant grow up, stop worrying about day-to-day details, and start focusing on big-picture, multi-year goals.
"Whether history records you as a success or failure," Ross warned, "will depend on whether you can shift from living in today to living in tomorrow."
It was some of the best advice I'd ever gotten. p221”