Many entrepreneurs dream of reaching the same heights as Google, Microsoft, or Apple, but only a handful manage. The main reason is that they tend to follow the crowd, replicating what is already popular, instead of daring to innovate. Let’s delve into this further.
As a business owner, you will also fail if you copy the failures around you. This article considers why having the courage to fail is not a setback, but a stepping stone to building successful businesses and fostering growth.
Successful Leaders
What distinguishes successful companies from those that fail is their courage.
Steve Jobs
Apple’s previous CEO, Steve Jobs, habitually proved his bravery with Apple products. He was willing to go to the Taiwanese manufacturer Foxconn to build the iPhone cheaply and at a high discount.
Today, Foxconn also manufactures iPhones in India, a trillion-dollar business. Beyond electronics, Foxconn also produces networking products and edge computing devices and operates data centers.
Bill Gates
Bill Gates was clever enough to buy the DOS operating system from Paterson and make billions by slightly modifying it for small computers.
Seeing opportunities that others are refusing to see is what distinguishes the great investor from the mediocre. Being overly realistic is as bad as, or worse than, becoming a slave to a corporation that has already been successful.
Warren Buffett
Warren Buffett, the billionaire who made Berkshire Hathaway a gigantic holding company, identified the secret to his success: avoiding what others love and loving what others avoid.
Love What Other People Are Avoiding
Should you copy what the businesses around you are doing? That is – copy the successful people you know, go into debt, stay in the USA, easy, leadership, popular, high prices, safe market, internet, or enjoyable. No. These qualities will give you a boatload of competitors to deal with.
Buffett’s financial rule would say you should avoid these things like poison. They are choking your revenue. Everyone is grabbing for these qualities, like a shrinking pizza at a football game. The key is to bake a new pizza. Love what other people are avoiding.
Implemented The Unpopular Variables
What are the people around you avoiding? Ignoring the successful people, saving, going international, hard, serving, unpopular, low prices, risky market, real world, and painful. If you do these things regularly in your business model, you will find many opportunities your competitors are missing. Why? Everyone is avoiding these things.
The big companies did not achieve success overnight. They implemented the unpopular variables before they became mega popular.
Copying an established company is like a toddler attempting to race a professional athlete. The toddler would be much wiser to play with blocks and slowly build coordination.
When To Take Risks
Resist the temptation to avoid risk. Resist the temptation to only do risky things. The successful path is more dangerous than Average Joe’s life, but safer than a Gambler’s. Think through what you are doing. Hang out with people who annoy you. They probably hold the secret to fixing your blind spots.
Put People Where They Are Best Suited
Organizational psychology can also help immensely. Often, a company’s founders are terrible at finishing the job. They are excited about their growth, but the credit card bill comes due.
Put your people where they are best suited. Loud, slick salespeople should not be executives, though they usually are. The best executives are realistic and have big ideas. Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and Warren Buffett are good examples. The worst executives are only realistic or have big ideas.
Slick salespeople with big ideas belong in the advertising department. Do not let them flatter and manipulate their way to the top of your organization. If they remain at the head of the company, they will eventually mortgage you to the hilt, with loss of revenue. The realistic person should be the financial and personnel manager. This will keep your people from breaching ethical standards.
The Myers-Briggs personality type system can help, particularly if you use a quality free assessment such as that pioneered by Dr. Dario Nardi of UCLA. When you know your people’s brain style, you can put them in the place of the organization where they will thrive.
Practical skeptics should not be your leaders. They tend to overestimate their own abilities while refusing to risk failure. No company ever succeeded by refusing to fail.
Mindset Management
People have a nasty tendency to overestimate their own abilities. This goes for you. Make a self-assessment about what you are good at and bad at. Your strengths and weaknesses could make or break your organization. If you do not see your blind spots, you will eventually hit a tree.
Do what you do not like for a good portion of the day. This will discipline your business and help you become well-rounded.
Consider using the financing method where your creditors are shareholders in your company. This takes the pressure off of you to perform, and gives you experienced people who can guide your growth.
A creditor on the team is better than a creditor who invades your team due to late bills. Communicate frequently with everyone. Do not let the cynic win. Have people with high emotional intelligence handle relationships.
The Confidence To Take Action
Growth comes when you pursue pain. There is no way around it. Listening to the overly cautious or exaggerated promises of failures will not help your model. Do not expand too rapidly. A steady increase over time is much better than a catastrophic collapse after being too optimistic.
Whether your business succeeds or fails will depend on your belief and willingness to suffer.
A strict work ethic and mindset are strongly correlated with business success. Doggedly pursue your goals and ignore the naysayers. A moderate approach that wins is better than an extreme approach that loses.