Lately, I’ve been thinking about a choice every founder eventually faces:

Do you want a nice workplace — or a great one?

But don’t get it twisted:

Great doesn’t mean cruel. Great doesn’t mean disrespectful.

A great workplace is where people are pushed to do the best work of their lives, held to world-class standards, and respected enough to be told the truth — even when it’s hard to hear.

Because mediocrity is never an act of kindness.

Mediocrity is a way to fail — the mission, the product, and the people themselves.

The real decision is this:

Do you want nice mediocrity… or greatness with meaning?

Greatness demands something uncomfortable: Standards.

Sometimes, keeping the bar high means the CEO has to push someone hard in a meeting.

Not because they enjoy it, but because good enough is not good enough.

If done right, it’s not about, “he has been hard on me.”

It’s about:

“I worked with him for 10 years, and we did the greatest work of our lives.”

Standards must be crafted carefully and communicated relentlessly.

They must be so real that mediocrity feels unnatural, and excellence becomes the only language the team speaks.

Because here’s a hard truth — one Steve Jobs understood better than anyone:

“A players hire A players. B players hire C players.” (Steve Jobs)

• A-players attract A-players.

• B-players attract C-players.

• C-players kill companies.

Once you lower the bar, you start a death spiral that’s almost impossible to recover from.

That’s how you build a place people are proud to be part of — and proud to remember.

What Will They Say About You?

In the end, the people who stayed and built with you should be able to say two things:

1. “He was right — good enough wasn’t good enough.”

2. “We built something so much better than anything else we’ve ever done.”

They won’t remember every meeting.

They won’t remember every correction.

But they will remember the pride of doing work that mattered — work that demanded the best of them.

That’s how you create the kind of company — and the kind of legacy — that’s worth everything it took.