When people ask me how my business is faring, I answer that “no matter what, I feel paranoid.”
“If I win a deal, I worry that I might get too confident and lose my edge.
If I lose a deal, I worry that it’s the beginning of the end.
I’m just constantly paranoid.”
For a while, my guiding light was a book by former Intel CEO, Andy Grove, called Only the Paranoid Survive: How to Exploit the Crisis Points That Challenge Every Company, but my new favorite book: Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters also offers the same advice, though based on data and evolutionary psychology.
As they write, “evolutionary speaking, it's good to be paranoid because it might save your life.”
I feel much better now.
Wait!! Who’s that behind you?
