“Success breeds complacency. Complacency breeds failure. Only the paranoid survive”
– Andy Grove, Co-Founder, Intel
Just a few months ago, times had never been easier. We were riding a decade-plus long bull market. It seemed as though everyone and their mother had joined or started a company that received hundreds of millions of dollars in funding. There were teenage kids in Lamborghini’s (seriously).
Those days seem like a distant past now. We may have had success in the past few years. Shit, I felt like I was doing alright in my five years since graduating college.
But now is not the time to get complacent.
University of Alabama football coach Nick Saban says of complacency:
“Complacency creates a blatant disregard for doing what’s right. You can’t do what you feel like doing. You got to choose to do the things that are going to help you accomplish the goals you have. When you get complacent, you lose respect for winning.”
So if we’re not complacent, what are we right now?
We’re strong. We’re focused. We’re grinding. We’re creative. We’re scrappy.
Now is the time to spend Sunday morning working on that side project. It’s the time to call up your customer just to ask how they’re doing. It’s time to FaceTime your mom.
We are the opposite of complacent today.
Let’s get after it.
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