Success Quote by Roy L. Smith

Success here isn’t framed as genius or hustle; it’s framed as diagnosis. Roy L. Smith, a clergyman writing in an era when American business was professionalizing and the Depression had made failure feel both sudden and moralized, smuggles a pastoral skill into the marketplace: the ability to spot rot early. The line turns “successful man” into a kind of corporate confessor, someone who listens for what’s wrong before the symptoms become public scandal.

The phrasing is doing sly work. “Finds out what is the matter” suggests the problem already exists; the winner isn’t the person who never has trouble, but the person who refuses denial. That’s a quietly theological move. Sin, in the older Protestant imagination, isn’t avoided by claiming purity; it’s confronted through recognition and repentance. Swap “sin” for “cash-flow leak,” and Smith is essentially preaching vigilance as virtue.

The competitive clause - “before his competitors do” - adds a bracing, unsentimental twist. This isn’t self-improvement for its own sake. Insight is advantage. Smith blesses the hard truth that markets punish ignorance, not intentions, and he makes early awareness sound like a form of righteousness.

Subtext: competence is moral, complacency is culpable. The quote flatters the reader with agency while warning that threats don’t announce themselves. It’s a sermon adapted to capitalism: examine your house regularly, because someone else is already walking your neighborhood looking for weaknesses.