Estimated reading time: 4 minutes
I ask this question in live trainings all the time. And I always get the same answers.
Failure. Imperfection. Mediocrity. Complacency.
Those are all antonyms for excellence. They’re what excellence is not. None of them are the enemy of excellence.
The real enemy of excellence is prosperity.
I know. It sounds backwards. Stick with me.
When I ask salespeople and managers what they’re afraid of, nobody says prosperity. Nobody says they’re worried about having a great month. But they should be. Great months are when the work of staying excellent is the hardest, and when most people quietly stop doing it.
I’ve watched this happen in dealerships across North America. A team grinds, they get good, they hit their numbers. And then — almost without noticing — the daily training slips. The huddles get shorter. The process gets sloppy around the edges because nobody’s calling it out. Why? Things are going well. Why mess with it?
That’s prosperity doing its damage. Quietly. Without any crisis to sound the alarm.
As I’ve taught for decades: prosperity is the enemy of excellence.
The danger of a bad month is obvious. You can see it, feel it, respond to it. The danger of a great stretch of months is invisible — until suddenly the market shifts, a competitor gets sharper, and you realize the habits that built your success stopped being practiced six months ago. The dealerships that struggled most after the COVID inventory boom weren’t bad dealerships. Many of them were very successful ones. Success without ongoing excellence is a foundation that erodes.
This isn’t an argument against abundance. Prosperity itself isn’t the problem — it’s beautiful. We should all want more of it. The problem is what prosperity does to our hunger if we let it. It fills us up. It tells us we’ve arrived. And the moment we believe we’ve arrived, we stop doing the things that got us there.
John Wooden said success is “peace of mind, which is the direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you made the effort to become the best of which you are capable.” That’s a very different definition than hitting your monthly number. It’s a standard that doesn’t have an off switch when business is good.
James Clear put it this way: habits are the compound interest of self-improvement. The gains are invisible day to day. They accumulate over months and years. Which means neglect compounds the same way — and you usually don’t notice until the debt comes due.
So I want to challenge you on this: when’s the last time your best month made you train harder?
That’s the question. Not “are we hitting our numbers” — but “are we getting better?” Are the daily habits still locked in? Are the huddles still purposeful? Is the process still being followed on every deal, or just the tough ones?
Be satisfied with what you have. Never be satisfied with who you are.
Prosperity is the signal to double down on excellence, not to coast on it. When things are going well, that’s your best window to improve. You’ve got resources, momentum, confidence. Use it. Evaluate your habits, your process, your culture. Ask yourself honestly: am I becoming the professional I want to be? Is my team?
Better Today Than Yesterday isn’t just something to say when things are hard. It’s the standard that protects everything you’ve built when things are good.
That’s how you build a dealership that becomes the standard in your market — not just for a quarter, but for the long run.
If you’re ready to build that kind of culture, let’s talk →
Seek Excellence.
