Jay Chaudhry has seen his share of success.

The 66-year-old co-founded his first company, SecureIT, with his wife in 1996. That sold for $70 million in an all-stock deal in 1998. He then founded three other companies, AirDefense, CipherTrust and CoreHarbor, all of which were ultimately acquired.

In 2008, he founded his current venture, cybersecurity company Zscaler, at which he now serves as the CEO. Zscaler has a current market cap of $25.31 billion as of Thursday. Chaudhry's own wealth is estimated at $9.5 billion, according to Forbes.

When it comes to what traits it takes to succeed, Chaudhry cites one characteristic: passion. Specifically, a "passion to achieve something meaningful," he says.

Here's why he believes it's critical.

'Work becomes your hobby'

To begin with, being passionate about what you're doing makes it much easier to do the job.

When that's your driving force, "then work becomes your hobby," says Chaudhry, "because you're enjoying it." It motivates you to work harder and get results. And those results drive you even further. It's a domino effect of success that starts from that deep desire to dive in.

For Chaudhry, that passion came from "building something," he says, or founding these multiple companies. He loved laying the foundations for his startups and seeing them through.

Ultimately, you end up saying, "let's do more," he says.

Without passion, 'it doesn't matter how much experience' you have

The opposite is true for people who don't feel that fire.

"If people don't have passion," he says, "it doesn't matter how much experience they have. It just doesn't matter for any job." You won't have that internal drive to keep working toward solving problems and moving ahead. You won't be as excited to do the work, and when you do sit down to produce, working could end up being less pleasant.

When Chaudhry's looking for employees, he pays attention to how much research his candidates have done and the kinds of questions they ask to gauge their passion. If it seems like they're very enthused, there's potential for that to drive achievements on the job.

After that, he says, "success drives success."

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