Success is the Best Revenge

People want others to fail because that is human nature.  People will not gloat about success.  They will gloat about failure.  It’s just the fact of life.

In the first stage of my company I had no money.  I had no education.  I had every reason to need to succeed, so I succeeded and I think the second time around I also had success. Now the third time around I probably reached a different level of criticism and it’s just human nature saying “Okay why is he back the third time around?”  “He is probably going to fail this time for sure” or “he already made so much money he has no motivation left.”

So you have a lot of backlash that brings you down. There are two ways to look at that energy. One way is to say “Maybe I am going to fail.” The second way to look at it is the train of thought of “I never failed before, I don’t know what that means yet and I’m going to continue to drive myself on the goal I was here for.”  

So you kind of use that negative noise as energy to keep you on course and when you start having those short term wins and you start validating why you’re there and how it’s working out again, success is the best revenge. 

In Their Own Words is recorded in Big Think’s studio.

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