Here is the complete transcript of the podcast
On the podcast today, I want to highlight a conversation I had with a bunch of incredibly talented cofounders of a company. Welcome, or welcome back to Success with Srini. Happy Sunday morning to you. Now I want to share the story with you because I think this has some value, this conversation has value. And regardless of who you are, and what you do, I think this will add to whatever you have got going in your life today. So long story short, small company, two or three founders, they’re still looking for, I think they’re onboarding a couple of co-founders. And I advised them whenever they have something for me, they have a question for me. And yesterday on the Zoom call, somehow, the call went to the competition. And one of the co-founders said, we are worried about the competition, that the marketplace is now seen. And I interrupted him. I said I don’t think the competition in the marketplace has anything to do with you. I think you are independent of the competition, I think you need to start thinking about yourself. And I think the single biggest competition is going to be from within this company. They were perplexed when I said that. And I said that even though all of you, the co-founders are incredible, you guys are amazing. But I think that the single biggest competition is going to be from the inside. And I said, I have seen I’ve been a part of many companies, myself as an employee, and now with my own company, and also involved with many other operations.
You see, there is always a disgruntled employee. And every time a disgruntled employee perceives a threat or perceives an injustice, they’re going to do whatever they have to do to pull down the whole company. And I’ve seen that happen multiple times. So I’m saying this from experience. And I’m not saying that you have an employee who’s going to pull the company down. But every time there is some lack of performance. In any company, you can see that that lack of performance can be tied to one individual, who has either given up lost motivation or created some other affiliation that is outside of the necessary affiliation. So they have started to bank their values and their beliefs and their loyalty somewhere else. I’ve seen that happen. And usually the performance of a company, any company can be tied to an exemplary performance of one employee or lack of back of one employee.
So the conversation went in different directions. And this model, I started to explain a bit more to them, I said, you know, the best way to really understand how a company can collapse is to study cybersecurity. And in cybersecurity, if you have taken a class on cybersecurity, they teach you all the different ways a company can be hijacked or a company’s data can be taken over. And there are four specific characters that identify, one is somebody who is upon somebody who is influenced or has no influence, has no idea gets influenced by innocence. And does something like downloading a PDF file or some zip file and malware or whatever, and then compromise just the whole company’s data. And then there is a goof. A goof is somebody who thinks that you know, I’m about, the policies, the standards, and all that and I can do anything that I want to do in the process compromises the security of the company. Then there is a character called collaborators who collaborate and participate in compromising the company’s data. And then there is also another character who could be called a wolf. Somebody who has an intent to destroy the company does everything has no outside collaborators has no inside collaborators, but just makes up the mind that I want to take this down. And this, this lone wolf could be the disgruntled employee who perceives or has perceived injustice being done to him or her and that’s all that’s how it goes.
Now, because this is a small company, and I made my case and I said because the small company only co-founders are working now. I don’t see this happening with you. But then understand the biggest threat is that one of you, one of you, or all of you may lose the opportunity. Because you make an irreversible mistake. And you lose the momentum in your thought process, there is a break in the intellectual flow that is happening within all of you. And in the process, you lose the train of thought. And as an entrepreneur, it’s going to happen to you all the time. And we have challenged entrepreneurs. And when I say we, I mean myself, we are constantly challenged by so many other things that are happening around us. It’s hard, it’s difficult to manage so many moving things. And because that possibility is there doesn’t matter how many co-founders you are, and how many people you have got going. But regardless, this could happen, and I see that as the biggest threat. I also highlighted this, and I have highlighted this multiple times on this podcast, which is the seed of our own construction, and the virus of our own destruction is within us. And as the founders, as the co-founders, or L as leader of a company or a startup or whatever it is, whatever you have got going in your life, you need to be constantly focusing on the construction aspect of this equation, not on the virus aspect of this equation.
So I think that a lack of proper thinking, lack of strategy, or a drop in your thought flow or thought process can create competition internally. And now you’re fighting to own yourself. And that I see as the biggest setback or competition, I don’t see any competition from anybody else from outside. Now, the reason I’m sharing this is that I wanted you to take this analogy for a second of this conversation or whatever I shared with them. And look into your own life and see who you perceive as your competition. And if you are then there may not be competition, you yourself are competing with yourself. There is no other individual who is seeking your title, your revenues or your clients, or any of that it’s you against you. And it is you who has to double up it is you who has to self explore it is you who has to inculcate new values, new beliefs, new understandings, new observations, and new data points so that you can grow and so that you can grow everybody else around you. And if you drop that thought process, and if you say, Oh, I’ve done enough, and I need to relax now, or I need to think about something else.
Now, at that moment, you have effectively lost the game. So now you have allowed other people to now succeed. They could be people outside of the company and other companies, other entities, and it’s very difficult to catch up. That was my conversation. I hope this helps. I hope this inspires you to really look into yourself and start questioning yourself. It’s a Sunday. I’m going to stop here. And I’ll be back here again tomorrow with another thought-provoking, Hopefully, conversation may be a question from you. Stay tuned. I’ll talk to you tomorrow. Bye now.