One of the characteristics of highly successful individuals is never being content with their achievements.

According to Emery Wells, CEO and co-founder of Frame.io, success means constantly striving for improvement and never being content with what has been achieved.

Seven years ago, Wells sold his business to Adobe for $1.275 billion, culminating years of hard work on his software platform. Despite the life-changing nature of a billion-dollar exit, Wells quickly returned to work and began contemplating his next move.

Meeting other successful entrepreneurs made Wells realize that success is relative, he tells CNBC Make It.

According to Wells, a characteristic of highly successful individuals is never being content or always believing there's still work to be done.

Adam Grant, an organizational psychologist at Wharton, wrote in Make It last year that successful individuals often embrace discomfort by learning new skills to advance their careers and hold themselves to high standards to achieve excellence.

According to Wells, no matter how successful you become, you always have the ability to look for the next thing to accomplish.

Constantly re-defining success

Growing up in Miami, Wells aspired to a career in film. At 19, he left college and moved to New York to bartend and develop his filmmaking abilities, with the goal of securing freelance video editing jobs.

After years of financial difficulties, a hasty decision to purchase a $17,500 digital camera led Wells to establish a successful video post-production business, Katabatic Digital. With the camera, a revolutionary piece of technology, Wells received an abundance of work: by 2014, Katabatic generated over $1 million in annual revenue from clients such as Coca-Cola and Pfizer.

Instead of continuing with Katabatic for the rest of his career, Wells and John Traver, an engineer at Katabatic, began working on software coding in their free time, with the goal of creating a profitable software product.

According to Wells, their initial project, a software platform for collaborative video feedback during post-production, was intended as a "smaller idea" to learn how to develop and market an app. After its completion, they planned to "take a swing for the fences" and pursue a more significant endeavor.

Frame.io, initially a project, grew beyond expectations and raised over $80 million in funding before being sold to Adobe for a substantial amount. However, after realizing that other tech entrepreneurs had sold their companies for billions, Wells considered the deal less life-changing than he initially thought.

""Wells said, 'I'm not successful in this group, and I'm not the king of the world,'" according to the report."

'There's just an internal motivation to build something'

Wells, who sold a billion-dollar startup, is no longer driven by financial gains. Instead, as CEO of Adobe, his motivation is centered on his creative aspirations and influencing others.

"Building stuff, being creative, and making software are all things I love. I'm motivated to create something and see it used by others. Can I have a greater impact and reach more people?"

Richard Branson, like Wells, believes that a person's reputation should be based on their creations rather than their net worth. Branson emphasized that money should never be the driving force behind one's success.

"Entrepreneurs worldwide are succeeding because they're making a difference in people's lives, according to Branson. He emphasized that this is the only reason for their success, and what truly matters is making a positive impact."

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