In today's episode, we delve into the concept of complacency and the challenges of maintaining success over time. Join us as Justin and Brian discuss the pitfalls of hitting a plateau, personal anecdotes from their sales careers, and insights from well-known figures like Ben Newman and Tim Grover. Learn strategies to avoid the seduction of success, keep pushing forward, and redefine what success means for you at different stages of life.

The Logistics & Leadership Podcast, powered by Veritas Logistics, redefines logistics and personal growth. Hosted by industry veterans and supply chain leaders Brian Hastings and Justin Maines, it shares their journey from humble beginnings to a $50 million company. Discover invaluable lessons in logistics, mental toughness, and embracing the entrepreneurial spirit. The show delves into personal and professional development, routine, and the power of betting on oneself. From inspiring stories to practical insights, this podcast is a must for aspiring entrepreneurs, logistics professionals, and anyone seeking to push limits and achieve success.

Timestamps:

(00:00) - Introduction to Complacency and Success

(01:29) - Personal Experiences with Complacency

(02:39) - Strategies to Overcome Complacency

(07:44) - Defining Success

(11:38) - Conclusion and Final Thoughts

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Has there ever been a time where things have been clicking for you, but then you reach a certain plateau of success? On today's episode, we're going to go over complacency and how to overcome the seduction of success. Justin, we hear about it a lot, man.

Complacency, plateauing, doing the status quo. You ever been there?

Yeah. I think you'd be lying if you say you have not every, every single person's experience, complacency, it's everywhere.

It's in every industry, it's on every sports team, it's in every individual. Everyone has it, every team.

The difference is who recognizes that it makes a change compared to who recognizes that or just doesn't care and they stay exactly right there.

I think it's one of the hardest things to do, right?

Like, I think even when you look at like sports teams and, you know, different athletic teams out there, it's like repeating as like a champion or repeating like a successful year after you've had a good year is like one of the hardest things to do.

Even on athletic teams or sports teams, that is one of the hardest things to do is to repeat as back to back champions or to repeat a great year and then follow it up with another amazing year. Right? People have that complacency that they're doing pretty good. They take things for granted and they don't work as hard.

They don't push themselves to that next level once they've achieved a certain level of success.

I know that, you know, for me, this happened a handful of times in my sales career in freight brokerage, where I reach a certain level of success, I feel pretty good about it and I would kind of coast for a little bit and then all of a sudden I would feel real, real shitty internally. And I'd say, okay, all right, man, like, you need to turn it around right? Where, you know, maybe my, my diet, nutrition got out of whack.

And I was like, you know what, my justification for that, I was like, you know what? I'm making decent money. I'm doing well. Yeah. I'm just going to, you know, ride this thing out.

And at the end of the day, like from the complacency side of it, it's, it's such a bad feeling when you go back and you look back three, four, six months, you're like, why didn't I try harder? Why didn't I do the things to set myself up for, for success?

You ask yourself in that situation, why didn't I go back and do set Myself up for success, whatever it may be. Ask yourself. You recognize that moment, but you were hitting goals.

Sure.

So you likely had a goal. Let's just use your previous role. You likely had a goal to. Let's just use a round number. A million dollars?

Sure.

You want to sell $1 million? Well, you hit that goal. What's your goal next year? Because you got a clean slate every year. Same thing with sports, right? You hit the goal.

But is your goal this year a million dollars? Did you raise it? 2 million. So, like, you get seduced by that type of success, you start getting comfortable.

And the only way to get over that is if you continue to push yourself. You have, you know, an accountability partner. You set new goals, whatever it may be. There's a number of strategies to, you know, avoid complacency.

But when I've experienced that, it's always been because I lost track of my goals or I hit my goals and I was like, great, sweet.

Now what, what next? I think Ben Newman, he's a guy that we, you know, we follow when we went up to his event in Vegas in October.

And he's a guy that talks about the seduction of success. I've never heard of it that way before him. So kudos to him.

I don't know if that's his own material or if that's original content or what, but, you know, that's a great depiction of how you have a certain level of success. And I think sometimes, like as individuals, we have to define what is success. Right. What is it that we're actually trying to achieve?

What's attainable. And so I even think when you get that, the real, where I feel like the real person comes out is how do you achieve after you get that point?

Because I think anybody can be a flash in the pan. Anybody can do a thing one time. But can you have that continued success over time?

Whether that's sales, whether that's logistics, whether that's sports, it doesn't matter the industry or the avenue. But how do you have a continued success? Yeah.

And you and I were fortunate enough to. To listen to Tim Grover speak.

Yeah.

The dude's an absolute animal. Zero Bullshit. If you don't know who Tim Grover is, he's notorious for being one. Just insane. But he was Michael Jordan's trainer.

He went on to train a number of other, you know, high level athletes like Kobe. But Brian, I had an opportunity to hear him speak.

And why it's so difficult to win year over year at the highest level is because you get Seduced by success.

Yeah.

You lose track of the habits that got you to that championship level. And you're not building on anything because you get comfortable because you want a championship. It's not saying, like, Jordan.

Jordan was like, he won. He repeated twice. So, like, there's.

There's different levels of that type of discipline, but doing it at a high level, year over year in building on that is what separates the 1% from the average.

Yeah. And I love, like, even in our industry, man, like, that's. That's where we have a clean slate every week. Right. We go on a weekly basis.

And the revenue numbers you put up or the sales that you have or the shipments move, do you have. They restart on Monday morning every week. And I love that piece because you can really see who's in it for the long haul.

If they have a handful of weeks that are really good in a row and then they die off. Right. And okay, what. What happened? Did they stop trying as hard? Did they stop prospecting? Did they not keep their.

Their pipeline as full as they should have? Those are things, especially as sales managers or leaders of companies, to keep an eye on.

Okay, what happens when this rep or this person reaches that level? Do they dip afterwards? Right. And not. Not every industry is similar to ours. A lot of times people, their contracts or their sales are one and done.

I know that was what I had at my previous company, where you would sell a deal, it would get implemented by somebody else, and I'm out to find the next deal. Right. And like, what's my pipeline look like? And you've said this a million times before, but 30, 60, 90 days prior.

That's usually the activity or the deals close that you get in the future.

Correct. The championship level. That's how you do that. Yeah, that's right, Brian.

You don't have someone following you around, hovering over your head or just in your shadow, saying, like, hey, you're getting complacent, Brian. A little lazy here. There's no one following you around. What are some tools you use or some habits you created to avoid that type of complacency?

Yeah, I don't know what it is. I've taken the Enneagram test before, and I'm a. I'm an enneagram3, which is like the. I think it's like the achiever or whatever. I don't.

I forget what they call it, but I think that's somewhat of the way that I was wired. I know a lot of it was the way I was raised, growing Up. You know, mom and dad, they were always trying to achieve whatever that was. Right. They were.

Whether that's in business or at home or trying to make sure that things were right. I think a lot of the credit goes to them. I think for me, I try to rely on, you know, different tools. Right.

I have an app on my phone called Habit Share.

It's a great app if for those of you that don't know what it is, you can put in five or six different habits and you literally go in, you check red or green every single day that you. You complete it. Right. So it might be like a 45 minute workout. Okay, check. It might be reading 10 pages. Okay, check.

I know that Andy Frisella, somebody that we follow, has a power list. And that might be anywhere from three to five items that you go in and check every single day so that you can stay consistent.

Which is a word that I know you love. Yeah. And it's action. Not just a word, an action.

It's a lifestyle.

Yeah.

No, that's great. And I think there's a lot of value, mentally when you're checking a box or crossing something off.

Yeah.

You know, for me, it's always crossing off or deleting. You know, I got sticky notes, virtual sticky notes on my computer. But I'll create a list. I do it at night, I do it in the morning.

And literally just deleting things off that list is filling. It makes me feel more productive because all the small, very simple tasks build to long term goals. So.

Yeah, two pieces we still need to truly hit on here. Brian.

Yeah.

One, what is success like? How do you define success? And two, what's wrong with enjoying your success? Like is you're getting seduced by. Are you getting complacent?

What's wrong with just enjoying the success you've had?

I can't really define success. The definition of success is based on a person by person basis.

That's something that, you know, your definition of it might be a little bit different than mine, and it might be different than another person. And I think that, you know, a lot of times we get told this often, but you know, to sit back and smell the roses. Right.

And I think there is value in that. I think, you know, for more than 24 hours. I think I personally would have a hard time. Right.

And I think that might be the way that I'm wired or what I see. I'm working on that personally to stop and smell the roses and see some of the success that we've had. In the first three, four years of.

Business, I would agree with that. And I do think my definition of success has evolved or changed throughout chapters of my life.

If you asked me when I was 23 years old, it's success is I just want to make a ton of money. I didn't think about anything else besides making a ton of money. But your values change, you mature, you get older.

And now success in my eyes is am I living a truly fulfilling life with where I'm at right now?

Yeah.

We have goals which success can be tied to those goals. And you and I, we want to build a company. We want to build a company and impact people.

Success can be viewed differently for how far we want to take that company. But I have a number in mind. I have an employee headcount in mind.

I have certain things that I want us to do and we're very aligned in a lot of those areas.

But in 10 years, am I really going to view that as success or am I going to view success as being able to make every single sporting event for my kids and being able to take a seven day vacation with my kids and truly be present and enjoy that time with them?

Yeah, I think that's perfect. And you nailed it. There are so many different definitions of success. And yours, yours and mine are very much aligned.

You know, there are certain things and I think it's a good thing to have goals and to want to achieve certain metrics. Right. I think it's a fine line. It's a very fine line.

Especially when you have kids and a family and you're getting into a different stage of life where. Okay, exactly what you just said. I want to be able to take off at 3 o'clock on a Thursday to go watch my daughter play soccer.

That's my definition of success. Now with you, what is? You know, and I think it might change like one year, three or five year.

But what's your definition of success in your current state?

Success for me is being truly fulfilled one day at a time.

If I have goals, daily goals that lead to weekly goals, and I'm fulfilled each day doing those goals and I'm going to bed knowing that I had a damn good day. I was present with my kids, I invested in our team, I was a good partner for Brian and didn't cause any bullshit like that is success for me.

At the stage I'm at right now, that is going to change. But the only person that can define that success is you.

You as an individual have to define your own success and Social media and any BS you see online like that is not success.

There's so many societal factors and I hate that. Like I wish people would be more mentally strong. I think I'm mentally weak sometimes where I let that societal stuff creep in. Right.

Where it's, you know, you have to be mentally strong and understand and have a crystal clear picture of what is success. To me. Okay.

Success means that I get to, you know, I've earned the right to leave at 4:30 to go exercise or I've earned the opportunity to leave early to go to my kids event or recital or game or whatever that looks like.

Yeah, I think that each person has to define it and what that truly means as opposed to society and Instagram and social media telling us what it, what it should look like.

Unfortunately, that's the case. We hope you all enjoyed this episode. Take some time and think, what does success actually look like for you? Don't get seduced by success.

Don't be complacent. You at the end of the day are the only one that's going to know whether or not you're being complacent and getting comfortable.

So think about what success looks like for you. Push yourself to continue moving towards that direction and let us know how we can help you get there.

At the end of the day, I try to get better from attending those as opposed to just going through the motions, showing my face and leaving. Yeah, if you're already going to be there, get something out of it.

Right.

But there's also the network connection where you're meeting people and you're building some of those relationships that you don't always get to see. Those, those people.