New Beginnings and Super Bowl Victories…
Greeting OG Community,
It is February 16th and that means two things, The Rams are Super Bowl Champions and the Open Gate website has been live for a week! Not often do we get to say that, but i like it! Yesterday, my beloved Rams took care of business on the field and took home their second Lombardi trophy and first for the city of LA. As a St. Louis Rams fan, I am ecstatic that that my Rams brothers in LA have gotten to relish in the sweet taste of victory that comes with winning the Super Bowl! I might be one of the few St. Louis hold outs but, I am glad that I am one of those few prideful and enthusiastic fans!
Teams win championships, not management / ownership. I might have my differences in opinion when it comes to decisions made by those in the positions of power within the Rams Organization, but damn do i respect their grind to strive for a Super Bowl ring within the first 10 years of coming back to LA and push to have a premium product on the field for the last 5 years! I don’t have to agree with a person in order to respect their grind. The Rams Organization has made questionable decisions throughout their Super Bowl bids, but it all paid off when they took home the hardware just a few days ago. It takes focusing on your grind no matter how much negativity that is thrown your way in order to walk your path of success in this world. I am here to say no matter how much I like or dislike those guys in power, they did exactly that and it paid in spades.
Like I said, management doesn’t win championships, players do. And there couldn’t be another group of guys that I believe are worth this success then the players within the rams organization this year. When you think about players with deserving story lines, go no further than the 2021 LA Rams. Cooper Kupp winning offensive player of the year and then earning himself the MVP in the Super Bowl speaks volumes for who that man is, a humble and fearless competitor! Arron Donald has been considered one of the greatest defensive players in the league, but it was in this Super Bowl run that he solidified himself as one of the great leaders and motivators in the NFL. What that man proves is that despite the talent one possesses, its one’s voice and how one uses that voice transforms them from good to great! OBJ resurrecting his career in LA only to get injured during the biggest game. The emotional rollercoaster he had to endure as a result of not being able to finish the game with his team, OBJ had to do one of the hardest things a competitor can do, watch and hope. Von Miller getting traded to the rams after a high ankle sprain and having 2 sacks in the Super Bowl alone. Finally, Cam Akers coming off a stellar rookie campaign only to tear his ACL in Preseason. Then making a miraculous 5 month recovery and producing big in key moments of the playoffs and Super bowl. There are so many more that I could name but I will leave it with these examples.
Once the final seconds ticked off the clock and the Rams were Super Bowl Champions for the second time in their existence, I realized something. These guys (and any professional athlete) work their entire lives to get to this moment and climb this mountain. Now that they made it to the peak, what are they supposed to do next? They have accomplished the goals that have driven them to get to this point, now what? What I saw in this moment made me realize that the grind never stops! Each interview focused on the mentality that while they are happy and will celebrate this massive accomplishment, the grind for success continues starting the very next day. They wanted to solidify their accomplishment through a mentality of greatness rather than get stuck in the proverbial accomplishments that others looks to as a benchmark. Those with greatness know that benchmarks are only a crutch for complacency that ultimately determine your future trajectory. Your success in the present doesn’t mean jack about your potential successes in the future! Grind and build every day and you will place yourself in a spot where the foundation for greatness is always at the core of everything you do. Through these means you will not need to get caught up in meaningless benchmarks.
We are lucky to not be under the microscope that professional athletes have, but it doesn’t change the mentality we should all carry if we want to be successful in our ventures. No we are generally not competing in the same way and in some cases we are not competing with anyone at all. This shouldn’t change our mentality to grind every day to improve and propel ourselves into the success that we strive for. If we want to maintain a level of success in our business and personal lives we need to maintain that mentality to grind every day no matter the situation. This applies to both failure and success equally. Never let failure get in your way for long. It is not considered a grind if there are no failures along the way. Failure is a quintessential part of building that foundation for continued success. The more a person fails and gets back up ultimately displays their level of tolerance for frustration and the resilience to push past those frustrations along the way to success.
Over at Open Gate we are forever going to fail, but we will never stop getting back up, learning from our failures, and coming back even harder with new and inventive ideas / plans. This is what makes this brand great! We are here to build, grow and learn together. This industry is still very much so in its infancy and we have a massive opportunity to write our own script on on Open Gate as a Community and as a Brand. We can write our own story to success and know that it was done without any opportunities for complacency! I know that I will not stop until I get this Community / Brand to spread around the United States and truly around the World! It all starts with community engagement and that means we need your help! The OG Community will become a model for success for any of those coming after us. But we want to accomplish those goals now! We will continually be thinking of out of the box ways to get cannabis content into the world for the Community to consume and share!
Help me spread this Dope Community and the possibilities for Open Gate: OG will be endless!