STREET DOGS: Success
Success contains the seeds of its own destruction
Success contains the seeds of its own destruction — Andy Grove. The late Jim Paul went from being a poor boy raised in Kentucky to serving on the board of governors of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange through a series of clever investments and a good dose of luck. But his cockiness grew alongside his success, and bad investment decisions eventually toppled him. In a few months he lost his reputation, his job and $1.6m, $400,000 of which had been borrowed from friends. "Personalising success sets people up for disastrous failure," Paul wrote in his book, What I Learned Losing a Million Dollars. "They begin to treat the successes as a personal reflection of their abilities rather than the result of capitalising on a good opportunity, being in the right place at the right time, or being just plain lucky." As Morgan Housel has pointed out: "Getting rich can be the biggest impediment to staying rich…. The more successful you are at something, the more convinced you become that you’re doin...
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