How to ensure success
No way am I getting on that thing. (California Historical Society)
An aspiring entrepreneur made a poignant comment in a recent conversation.
“I can only do it,” he said, “if I know it’s going to be successful.”
My first reaction to this was amusement. If course we don’t know that a new venture is going to be successful. Nobody can tell the future. But then, when I reflected on this idea more deeply, I came away with a different view.
I realized that a key ingredient in the success of my own ventures — the ones that were successful — was, indeed, the conviction that they were going to be successful. That vision of the future kept me moving forward when things were difficult and allowed me to continue giving consistent effort to the necessary tasks, projects, and relationships. I guess I did know.
The knowledge — really, the belief — that something will be successful isn’t a guarantee that it will be. But it’s almost impossible to succeed without it. If the vision of your desired outcome doesn’t feel real to you, it will be hard to get the necessary people on board. You’ll lose momentum and the urgency will fade. The thing isn’t going to happen.
Is that a failure, though? It’s definitely true that not everything I’ve tried has been a success. But I’ve also defined “success” very carefully. For me, in a business venture, success is sustainability. Does this thing have enough life in it to keep going without me having to pour time, energy, and money into it? Is it worth it? If so, it’s a success. To discover that I don’t feel like sticking with something isn’t a failure. it’s a choice.
If I define success as, “Can I leap from my full-time job with benefits to this new thing without losing any income?”, well, I’m not sure I’ve passed that test even once. If something needs to throw off $10K a month within six months, I am most definitely risking a fall into the abyss — true failure. Ruin. But when my expectations have been aligned with my circumstances, I’ve been able to make decisions that paid off, however small the return on investment at first.
Entrepreneurship has risk built into it. It’s in the very definition of the word. It’s the understanding that something won’t work that offers the potential for financial reward. The entrepreneur has (hopefully) the expertise and experience to manage the risk as a fact of life, keeping a balance between risk and reward and never betting it all on one thing. The entrepreneur’s awareness that there is no sure thing plays into their decision-making and allows them to build systems that are more likely to contribute to success. This gives them the confidence to move forward with a level of uncertainty that they can handle, as all of us do in our daily lives.
However, entrepreneurship is not the only path to business ownership, fulfillment, financial success, and creative expression. That’s right, you don’t have to be an entrepreneur — systematically taking financial risk — to start a business. And quitting your well-paying job is not a prerequisite for any of it. You don’t have to prove that you have what it takes. You gain what it takes as you move along, day by day, in whatever way feels doable.
There’s no magic that can tell you whether you’re going to be successful in a certain endeavor. But if you define success in a measurable, specific way, figure out what has to be done to achieve that result, believe in your ability to carry out the plan, and fully commit to doing it — all while seeking support and counsel along the way — you’re probably going to succeed. It’s not very glamorous. But you end up having a lot of control over the outcome after all.
