One of the things I love about working at the Rubicon Project is the smart and insightful people I’m surrounded by every day.  Our CEO, Frank Addante, just published a post on his personal blog titled “Fear of Success” and I had to share it on our corporate site as it contained a message that I think will resonate with just about everyone.

It all started with an innocent Twitter update from Frank looking for new ideas for a blog post. One of our engineers, Ian, responded with this gem:

“Fear of failure can often paralyze a company, but sometimes so can ‘fear of success’. I don’t imagine that’s ever slowed you down, but I’d be curious to hear your thoughts on it.

Frank took Ian’s suggestion to heart and addressed some hard lessons he learned from being a victim of his own success that caused him to lose, and then re-find, behaviors that in-part make him the stellar business leader he is. Below an excerpt I think many of us can relate to.  Give the whole post a read. It’s worth the time and an excellent reminder to us all.

“…The problem is similar to the difference between children and adults. Children run around with little fear. Adults are more cautious. The reason I changed my behavior is because I was a victim of my own success. With success came expectations. Before, when I was the “young kid in the room” I could make mistakes because it was expected, I could say the wrong thing and it was OK and if I did anything great or impressive it was a surprise. All of a sudden, there was this inherent pressure to perform. I was no longer the “young kid” in the room that got lucky a couple of times. I became the “experienced entrepreneur” that people actually expected something from. People expected results. They expected me to say something smart. They expected the right answers. These expectations clouded my ability to simply trust my gut and I felt that I needed to have more logical support for my decisions. It slowed me down…

Tags: Entrepreneurship by njordan       > No Comments