What drives you? What motivates you? What is your why, your passion, your mission?
Most of us are propelled by a mosaic of motivations, a mixture that morphs depending on circumstances and events, some forward looking, present or future benefit driven, others avoidance based, seeking to dodge pain or suffering or failure.
I was fortunate enough to experience a period of poverty in my youth, and it left me with a great aversion to inefficient chaos, to being without resources or good options. Prosperity to me became creating a wealth of viable, attractive alternatives. For the longest time, for motivation, I used the memory of being on the edge, of feeling the hot breath of the wolf close behind. Over time, the joy of the journey of learning, the invigorating climb to the peak, the challenge of carving a path to the mountain top, the inescapable accumulation of wisdom and growth, all these became stronger and stronger drivers.
Yet I never totally released the memories of the wolf for I believe that one of the greatest dangers of champions is overconfidence, dwelling in all too comfortable complacency. I guarantee you that the wolf pack is still out there slinking around in the dark of the woods. If you do not guard against the wolf showing up on your porch, the wolf WILL show up, it’s just a matter of when.
As an entrepreneur at times I have to sign personally on rather large loans that, if they went south, would bring that wolf into my home and invite him to sit down at my family dinner table. That personal liability and the willingness to endure that risk is what separates the CEOs of the corporate world from the entrepreneurial owner-operators of the private world. I’m not sure that many understand the difference or the magnitude of it.
Closing Quotes:
“Success breeds complacency. Complacency breeds failure. Only the paranoid survive.” – Andy Grove, 1936-2016, Intel CEO and 3rd employee
“You want to have butterflies in your stomach, because if you don’t, if you walk out onstage complacent, that’s not a good thing.” – Joan Jett, b. 1958, rock icon, Godmother of Punk
“The difference between an entrepreneur and a professional business manager, is one of attitude. The entrepreneur, especially when starting out, knows that he is operating on the threshold of success or failure. A single mistake can ruin him. He can’t afford that single mistake…while others leave the office at five o’clock, he stays behind and works to solve those problems that beset his business. He takes his problems home with him. He lives his business twenty-four hours a day.” – “Managing”, Harold S. Geneen, 1910-1997
As always, I share what I most want and need to learn. – Nathan S. Collier
Note: Every effort has been made to properly source any 3rd person material. I am, however, a voracious reader. If anyone finds any unattributed material, pls let me know asap and I will be delighted to give credit where credit is due.
“All intelligent thoughts have already been thought; what is necessary is only to try to think them again.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1749-1832