Surprise, Most Successful People Are Insecure, Even Sharks

Hey everyone. I’ve kind of backed myself into a corner here by starting every blog by saying hey, and now I’m struggling to stop. Going to give that a shot next week.

In Friday’s episode, Erika interviewed Barbara Corcoran, New York City real estate mogul and Shark Tank shark. I was super excited for this one because I am a huge Shark Tank fan, anyone who has watched an episode of that show knows Barbara is an absolute badass and as a grad school dropout looking to continue his education through this show, she seemed like a pretty valuable source to help me do so.

What I found fascinating is that the FIRST place Barbara went when Erika talked to her about a key to success wasn’t confidence, intelligence, discipline or even hard work (though she got to that soon after), but insecurity as a driving force. Barbara said her driving motivation is the fear of being caught unprepared, and this forces her to prepare for every single day like you are about to take a final exam. Corcoran went as far as to say that even after climbing all the way to the top and building the most successful real estate business in New York City, she had herself convinced that it had all been luck and favor had been on her side, rather than talent. Some people may refer to this as self-doubt, my therapist refers to it as imposter syndrome, but regardless of what you call it, we all deal with it and boy is it refreshing to know one of the most successful people out there does the same.

Whether we do it intentionally or not, we are always comparing ourselves to one another, for good or for worse. The good comes in the comfort of being able to look at someone who is incredibly successful and confident like Corcoran is and find similarities to ourselves. We’re going to ignore the bad for today.

This is just a portion of the preposterous amount of advice Corcoran dealt out on this episode, but I thought it was a piece that people could probably relate to the most.

I can assure you this daily blog post won’t forever be filled with these motivational ideas and self-help type stuff. Trust me when I say I am probably the last guy who should be telling people how to look inside themselves for help, but this podcast seems to have a knack for drawing some great ideas and quotes out of people that are just easy and fun to write about. 

Enjoy the long weekend, even though time is no longer real and every day simultaneously feels like a week and weekend day. 

Listen to Barbara's episode of Token CEO here: