The Paradox of Success: Why success attracts haters

Business, like sport, is about winning and losing, and just like sport, the more successful a team becomes, the more haters it attracts. Floyd Mayweather is never the most popular guy in the ring, Manchester United are hated by all but their own fans and Brewdog has armies of people desperate to see them fail, and what do they all have in common…being highly successful over a prolonged period. This paradoxical relationship between success and haters, gives rise to what I call anti-fans.

I think a big part of it is the love of supporting the underdog. We all naturally gravitate to cheering on the underdog, so when someone is no longer the underdog, and consistently wins, it shatters the dream of the little guy winning, of David beating Goliath.

I believe jealousy and envy play a big part in it too, some people just can’t be happy watching someone else be successful, but when it comes to business I genuinely love seeing people do well, and why wouldn’t I?

I choose not to have a bitter and negative attitude towards other peoples success, because it not only serves no benefit to me, but also because negativity spreads and it would cascade over other parts of my business and life and I don’t like that.

If you think you’ll get loads of new “friends” when you become successful, just wait to see how many anti-fans you collect. People you don’t know, have never met, and have zero connection to, who will publicly celebrate every one of your failures, and will be gutted each time you succeed. I’ve failed plenty of times, so I’ve got plenty of anti-fans, people who sit and wait on me failing again, and I love thinking how devastated they’ll be each time I win.

My thoughts on how to deal with haters is to just keep on pushing, set hugely ambitious goals, take risks, make massive mistakes, fail, and fail again, knowing every time you fail, you’ll gain even more anti-fans. You’ll live in their heads ‘rent free’, you’ll have their soul and every one of your wins will be an injustice to them.