Don’t give your best when it comes to business.
By: Manoj Pun
Tags: Risk, Perspective, Questions, Business

“The quickest way to lose a friend is to make him your business partner.” — Aaron Clarey.

Do your best. Give your best shot. just do it. 100%. When these simple statements are presented to a naive mind, it sounds logical. Why not? Yeah giving your best will certainly give the best result. Oh, my favorite, “Think positive.” A big middle finger across the face.

Whatever fluffy ideal dreams you carry within your head when it starts to take a shape in the reality, there is a clash between your dreams and the physical reality. Now, it’s after the destruction that matters. Whatever crippled self you have after the collision, gather it up. Because that is where we all begin with.

When I look at the fresh buds who just want to start a business, because they have seen a rich businessman and want to live like them, I cannot help but smile at them. Because they remind me of myself when I wanted to start my own thing, live the life. But I wonder how many of them know what a balance sheet is, what it takes to host a website/ create one, invest all of their cash, convexity risk, network effect, or have a deep specialist skill about the business or the product? And the best of all what is their age?

I am sure you are familiar with the stats that 9 out of 10 businesses go bust in before their anniversary. The average age of a successful startup founder is 45.

But no, we have been sold a narrative, if you are not a 26 yrs old successful founder you are late. Let me remind you these outliers are not even 0.01% of a gaussian distribution.

Not saying you cannot be one, but realize any business has multiple variables attached to it. First, You must know what the equation is and then simplify it to find the solution.

Let us time warp together to a point of time where you have absorbed enough resources to launch a business (with convexity). Now, you remind yourself of the advice, DO YOUR BEST. Simply enough you do it. You do your best.

You create the best product with the cheapest price guaranteed. What do you think will happen next?

Thinking positively, wink wink. You sell products like crazy your sales skyrocket. What do you think will happen next?

People love your product and your audience wants more of it. But you have already given your best. What do you think will happen next?

Surprisingly, well unsurprisingly, the Copy cat culture will eat your business and create the exact same product cheaper because of the volume order. Next thing you know the market is dilute and your business takes a slam dunk the following fiscal year.

Then what kind of strategy would you deploy in this war?

You could intentionally underdeliver the product that addresses the need of the market. Keep the best of you for the last. You deploy the necessary updates depending on the market swings. That’s one of the many ways. Or you could harness positive thinking and hope the starts would align symmetric circles to grant your business a marginal year.

This is when you know prepared for randomness is a better strategy than trying to predict the market swing.

This is my wish & my blessing, may you find who you truly are & express it to the world.

Lots of Love, Chao.