As I was daydreaming today of all the businesses I’d like to start if only I had enough money to hire other people to do all the work, I got to thinking… nobody really knows how to succeed, do they?
In my last post, I said my dream was to own a theme park. But how many people who achieve their dreams1 were really working toward them their entire life? It seems like the super rich and famous just kind of fall into place. They really have no idea how they got there. They can say generic things like “attitude is everything” and “don’t be stupid with your investments,” but there’s still no objective science to the process. There are still no specific steps one takes. Really, you just do whatever you want while being as smart about it as you can.
I’m not sure I can really claim to have a “business model” since I don’t have a business, but if I ever do, I will probably think in terms of luck. That’s not to say I wouldn’t try to be smart in my decisions, but I wouldn’t get too hung up on trying to understand how to dominate the market, how to become as huge as Disney or Microsoft or Google. It is tempting to attribute their lofty positions to the mind powers incredible business geniuses, but they’re actually the product of quite a lot of luck, of being in the right place and the right time, and not being too stupid. (Of course, after you get that lofty, you can afford to hire geniuses to try to keep you there.)
You can envy the people who win the lottery, but there’s no science to it. All they did to win was to play like everyone else.
Finally, here’s a pretty interesting article on the art of business-ness: 10 things you won’t learn in school.
It has nothing to do with what I’ve just been saying, but it’s still interesting, I think.
——————–
1 And I mean big dreams. If your dream is to write a novel or run a marathon, that’s something directly up to your willpower. Big dreams are dreams that require certain decisions being made by other people, like whether or not to buy your book. You have no direct control over these decisions. And I hope you like my use of notes in a blog. It makes me feel trendy.