How to become ‘Hard to fail’
How to become ‘Hard to fail’
About a dozen years ago I read a book that left a lasting impression on me. I still think of it from time to time and promise myself I will live by that mission. So far so good.
So what am I talking about?
Every entrepreneur’s favorite topic - success of course, and the book is called ‘Antifragile’, more about it later.
Like the rest of us folks, I obsess over it but I’ve discovered that most entrepreneurs don’t take the talked path to success.
That’s right, the ultra successful people that you hear about in the press are those who got to their spot by chasing success and getting it right. They made some really revolutionary decisions and hit the nail on the spot.
That results in radical success. The kind you see from Sam Altman, or Jobs, or Buffet.
But for every single one of these folks, there’s about a few hundred who tried a similar path, a similar product and didn’t get there. Like the guy who founded Orkut.
The point is, if you are targeting radical success, that is the path you need to take but the chances of success are incredibly rare.
Now, why the book keeps coming to my mind, because that’s the path I see most reasonably successful entrepreneurs take.
An obsession with avoiding bad situations and decisions.
Anti-fragility, as it is described, is a quality of becoming stronger from a bad situation instead of weaker.
So you walk into a business crisis, you walk out of it with big lessons learnt, new strategies created and start a new growth cycle.
It’s a great thing to have and that’s the quality present in some quantity in every entrepreneur who’s survived a while. The knack of benefitting from a crisis, even if a small one.
So how do you build this - hard to fail - quality?
From all the study and analysis that I’ve done and the case studies that I’ve read, it has to be about ‘conservation’ not brute strength. About reducing exposure, limiting expenditure, finding innovative and frugal systems to achieve goals.
The hard-to-fail entrepreneurs have high situational awareness and reaction times to match. For certain they are not looking to find a growth opportunity in every crisis, but when a crisis strikes everyone just surviving that round is a ticket to dominance.
That I think is what ‘antifragility’ is. Not actively knowing how to turn a crisis around, but surviving it with enough energy left to benefit from the next bull-run.
Do you agree? Have you had an anti-fragile situation in your life yet? Tell me about it.
Also…
I have an anti-fragile app for you. Something that helps you find connects, build relationships and get contracts with bloggers with total automation.
Yes, you just need to tell it the niche and it will find the best bloggers, their contact emails, and even their phone numbers and it will automatically send your outreach messages to them.
You can use it to secure guest-posts, build backlinks, find affiliates and also mentions.
It’s a great way to promote your products, your business and your blog without having to pay a pile of cash in advertising.
Check it out here
It’s called Postifluence.
Let me know what you think of it.
Cheers!
Your best friend in the business
Cyril Gupta
Of Teknikforce
