Category: Courage


Be the strong one

Filed Under: Courage, Personal Development by apingel — View Comments
December 9, 2010

In Iconoclast, Gregory Berns talks about why we go along with the group even when we know the group is wrong.

The thing is, any creature that has survived all these years of evolution is – in the words of Neal Stephenson – a stupendous badass. And your brain’s contribution to your stupendous badassery is to help you make good decisions. It’s not proud or picky – anything that will help you make better decisions is fair game. And one of the data sources it uses is other people’s opinions.

The law of large numbers says that we are, on average, a lot smarter together than we are individually. Take a jar, fill it with jelly beans, and ask 1000 people how many jelly beans are in the jar. The average of their 1000 answers will be pretty darned close to the correct amount, even if not a single person guessed right. This means that in most cases, the group consensus is probably a better answer than your individual opinion. Your brain knows that, and takes it into account when helping you to form your individual opinion.

Where the law of large numbers goes wrong

The problem is, the jelly-bean experiment only works if you ask the 1000 people individually. If you say “How many jelly beans do you think are in this jar? The average answer so far is 42” then your subject will likely give an answer in the 30-50 range, even if a moment’s consideration would indicate that there must be at least 100. While you’re trying to use everyone else’s brain to help you make a decision, they’re trying to use your brain to help them make a decision… and one loud idiot can screw up the decision for everyone in the group.

The archtypical example

Iconoclast references a study by Solomon Asch, who gave subjects a multiple choice test where one answer was clearly right and the other two were clearly wrong. But the subjects were in a group of 8 where everyone was asked to give the answers out loud – and all 7 of the other “subjects” were actors who gave the wrong answer. And, as we’ve been discussing, most subjects caved to popular opinion and gave the wrong answer even though it could be demonstrably proven wrong. What’s worse, half the time they didn’t even realize that they were caving to popular opinion – although they gave the wrong answer 66% of the time, they said that they had gone with the group consensus against their own best judgment 25% – 35% of the time.

The good news

To make the subject give the wrong answer, the group consensus had to be unanimous. If 6 people gave the wrong answer and only 1 person gave the right answer, the subject would give the right answer. It only takes one dissenter to give people the courage to speak up against the group.

That means you, although you’re only one person, have the power to change what happens around you. A budget-blowing shopping spree can be prevented by one person saying “Let’s have a potluck instead.” In many cases, bullying can be stopped by one person saying “Back off guys; you’re not funny.” And a person who’s too frightened to try out their idea can be encouraged by a single friend who says, “I don’t know if it’ll work, but I think it’s worth trying.”

It’s not symbolic, and it’s not a token protest; it helps. Be the one dissenter.

Do you know someone with a good idea who needs to know that it’s worth trying? Why not give them an Idea Approval Certificate?

Resources for Further Reading
Iconoclast Book Review

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Success Isn’t Instantaneous

Filed Under: Courage, Personal Development by apingel — View Comments
October 9, 2010

Taking a big step towards your dreams can be is really, really scary. You like the idea of success, but taking a step that might actually bring about success? No, that’s just terrifying. Trust me, I’ve been there. I was there when I started this blog. I was there when I got as many visits in 1 day as I used to get in a month (Thanks @daveseah!). I was there this last week, when I decided to launch an info product on how to design a marketing plan.

I have good news for your lizard brain — success doesn’t come like it does in a Disney movie. You may well have a Tipping Point. But what comes after weeks or months or years of hard work and dedication… is more hard work. Like last week, when I decided to launch my info product. I wavered back and forth and paced around the room and cried (yes, literally) before I went ahead and took action. I registered a domain name, set up the website, and….

realized that I have no idea how to use paid internet advertising. I have an adwords campaign. Setting one up is as easy as they claim. Setting up a good or effective campaign… that’s something else entirely. My results to date have been:

  • 670,454 impressions, resulting in 552 clicks, resulting in 3 orders… all from countries I can’t yet ship to. [campaign corrected to show ads only in countries I can ship to]

  • 17 impressions, 0 clicks [modified campaign according to google's advice]
  • 5 impressions, 0 clicks [started over. Actually read help files]
  • 26 impressions, 0 clicks
  • 511 impressions, 0 clicks (2000% improvement!)

I’m sure I’ll get there eventually. And as long as my campaign sucks enough, it doesn’t cost me anything. And the really good news is that my lizard brain has determined that this is no threat, so it’s curled up and gone to sleep. By the time the incremental success catches up and turns into actual success, it will be too late.

So whatever you’ve been thinking about doing — it’s not as scary as you think. It probably won’t work anyway. So go ahead and try it.

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Shipping Hurts

Filed Under: Courage, Personal Development by apingel — View Comments
September 2, 2010

Seth Godin talks a lot about how the prehistoric-don’t-get-eaten-by-a-lion part of you (which he calls The Lizard Brain or The Resistance), really, really hates it when you try to do something remarkable. It hates for you to make products, because there’s a chance they might fail (and it associates failure with getting eaten by lions). It hates for you to start a new business, because there’s a chance you might fail (and get eaten by lions). It hates for you to try freelancing, or start a blog. In fact, it hates everything that might help you get ahead in life. It wants you to be average and boring.

If you manage to circumvent The Resistance long enough to actually get a project started, The Resistance turns to subterfuge and sabotage. It tells you that your novel needs another edit before you send it to the publisher, that your business will really go a lot better if you wait until you’ve taken accounting, that you shouldn’t try freelancing until you have some more money (wait.. aren’t I freelancing to get more money? Shh! The Resistance hates logic). The Lizard tries to keep all projects in “pending” mode, tries to keep you from ever shipping.

Godin has talked a lot about how the lizard will try to keep you from shipping your projects, by making you scared or uncertain or angry. What he hasn’t mentioned is that if you get around all that and manage to ship anyway, the lizard will switch to negative reinforcement: it will punish you for shipping, by making you terrified that you left a typo on page 5, or that your customer will hate the color scheme, or that you set the price too high. The goal is to associate pushing the Send button with excruciating pain, so that you won’t ever do it again.

Even though it’s happening after the shipment, it’s still The Resistance, and it doesn’t have your best interests at heart. Ignore it.

Resources For Further Reading
10 Weaknesses of Human Intelligence
Linchpin
Avoiding Momentum

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Dangerous or Gutsy?

Filed Under: Courage, Personal Development by apingel — View Comments
August 31, 2010

Scenario:
You and some friends are on a tour in the African savanna, enjoying the scenery and the wildlife, when an angry rhinoceros charges the vehicle. There’s a rifle on the seat next to you with enough power to stop the rhino. Do you

    a) Scream and cower in terror?
    b) Grab the rifle, take aim, and shoot?

Please note that this is a scary situation. Sitting up straight, taking careful aim, and shooting steadily will require a lot of courage. It’s a gutsy thing to do.

But it’s also the safest thing to do. If you miss, you’re no worse off than if you hadn’t tried, so there’s no downside risk. If you hit, you’re a lot better off than if you hadn’t tried, so there’s a lot of potential upside. You’re clearly better off doing the gutsy thing.

And… how does this relate to business?

We tend to associate “gutsy” stuff with “dangerous” stuff. And sometimes that’s true: going over Niagara Falls in a barrel requires guts and is dangerous. But sometimes, as in the rhinoceros example above, the “gutsy” decision is also the least dangerous decision.

And that happens in business sometimes, too. Buying enough factory capacity that you can actually meet demand, shipping a product you know isn’t quite as good as you’d like, or starting a blog in your free time… all of these take courage, but are, objectively, the best, smartest, safest decision.

Recognizing which ideas are dangerous, and which are gutsy-but-good, is one of the most important skills you can develop.

Resources for Further Reading
Intelligent Risk Taking
Risk Analysis

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Why Courage?

Filed Under: Courage, Personal Development by apingel — View Comments
August 8, 2010

When I moved my blog to this URL, I went through each post and sorted them all into my current categories. And as I did so, I noticed that a lot of my pages are filed under Personal Development, and most of those are filed under Courage. What gives? Why is personal development even on a website about money anyway?

The short answer is that the test market wanted it. I started this blog because I had met actual people who had questions about monetizing their skills and talents and experience, and so my posts have been answering their questions, or explaining things they didn’t understand. And a lot of that was not about the differences between LLCs and S-corps, or the selection of a logo, but about more fundamental, fuzzy things. Like organization, frugality… and courage.

In my personal, limited experience, very few people fail in business because they don’t have the technical skill or the ability to research business entities. They fail because they ask the wrong questions. They fail because they don’t bother to look up the answers. They fail because they let their brother-in-law talk them out of it.

Most people end up in an uninspiring dead-end job that they hate because they don’t have the courage to change it.

Courage in Self-Monetization

Courage to Be Different

The fact is, most of our world, and all of Western society, is oriented on employment. If you ask someone how to get more money, they will tell you to get a higher-paying job. If you ask someone what you should do out of college, they’ll tell you to get a job. If you don’t ask what you should do out of college, they’ll still tell you to get a job (I’ve been going through this a lot).

And to buck that trend takes courage. To tell your mom that you’re not going to get a job. To tell new acquaintances that you don’t have a job. To have to explain, for the 200th time, that it’s OK, you don’t need condolences, you like being unemployed. You have to have the courage to be different.

The Courage To Try Something New

There are lots of things that are comfortable and familiar to you: writing 2-page essays with 12-point font and 1/2″ margins, tuning into your favorite TV show, going shopping, cleaning the house. And given the option, you’d rather do something that’s comfortable and familiar than something that’s new and scary. But all of the non-job monetization options are new and scary, by definition (anything new is automatically scary).

It’s easier to fall back into your routines. But if you’re going to monetize yourself without working 40 hours a week, you have to have the courage to try something new.

The Courage To Take A Risk

Employment is a world of known outcomes: you go to work in the morning, you get to leave at night and take home a paycheck each Friday. That’s the deal, and it’s your employer’s job to make it happen. OK, from time to time there may be BIG moments of uncertainty, where you get downsized or you change departments or whatever, but basically your day-to-day routine involves no risks at all.

Everything else, not so much. When you wake up on January 1st, you don’t know how much money you’ll make this year. When you start a month, you don’t know where your rent money will come from. Depending on the business you’re in, you may wake up in the morning not knowing if you’ll have any work today.

And you have to try things without knowing what will happen. An ad writer who’s an employee knows that they’ll get paid their daily salary regardless of how successful the ad is. A small businessperson has to launch an ad into the world with no idea whether it will be successful or not. A restaurant owner has to start the business without knowing — for sure — whether they’ll get enough customers to stay open. An investor has to buy the apartment building without knowing whether the economy will take off or tank.

There are no certainties in an entrepreneurial lifestyle, whether you’re an occasional freelancer or a multi-million-dollar stock trader. Your day-to-day life is full of unknown outcomes. You have to have the courage to take a risk.

The Courage To Take Responsibility

An employee can always blame someone else.

    “I’m sorry; it’s company policy”
    “My boss told me I had to do it this way”
    “The board made that decision; I have to carry it out.”

An entrepreneur can’t. It’s all you. You made the decision to run that ad. You made the decision to carry that product. You made the decision to deny that refund. It means you get credit for the good stuff… but you have to have the courage to take responsibility, however it turns out.

The Courage To Fail

I don’t like failing. You don’t like failing. No one says to themselves, “Gee, I’ve got a whole day off! I think I’ll go seriously suck at something.” It’s not fun. And that’s a good thing: hating to fail is what makes you try to succeed.

But, I’m sorry, you are going to “fail” at least some of the time. Learning to be an entrepreneur is just like learning any other skill: you missed the goal a bunch when you were learning to play soccer, you wrote a lot of illegible stuff before you figured out how to write, and you’ll have trouble selecting products, naming the company, developing a brand, and writing a business plan, as you learn how to monetize yourself. It’s just the way it goes. If you’re so afraid of failure that you won’t give it a try, you won’t get anywhere in this project. You have to have the courage to fail.

You Have to Have Courage

If you have all of the above characteristics, you don’t need me to teach you how to do business taxes; you’ll do the research and figure it out for yourself. If you don’t have the above characteristics, there’s no amount of education I can give you that will let you succeed.

In the end, it comes down to you.

Resources For Further Reading
The Invisible Mallet
This Ain’t Middle School
Risk Analysis

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