less humans, more robots

One thing I’ve learned is that there is no formula for success in business. Believe me, I wish there were. I would love to be able to give you a step-by-step guide to achieving your business goals. But I can’t. That’s because no challenge in business is identical to any other. Each is shaped by a multitude of factors that give it unique characteristics, and your response has to be tailored accordingly.

Then how is it, you might ask, that some entrepreneurs are able to start one successful business after another and rarely — if ever — fail? By successful, I mean a business that lives off its own cash flow, provides a good living for its owners and employees, and generates the profit it needs to keep growing. You have no doubt run into people with the ability to create such businesses almost at will. In the media, they are often referred to as serial entrepreneurs. I suppose I’m one of them, although I have certainly had my share of failures. So what do serial entrepreneurs know that allows us to have a relatively high batting average when it comes to starting businesses? Or is it just a matter of luck?

Far be it from me to downplay the role of luck in any business venture, but I don’t believe luck alone accounts for the success I have enjoyed. Nor does it explain the successes of other accomplished company builders I have had the privilege of knowing. Rather, what we have in common is a certain mentality, a way of thinking that allows us to overcome many obstacles and take advantage of many opportunities as they arise. I call it the knack.

What exactly is the knack? I think it boils down to a set of rules that can be applied to a wide variety of situations. Some of these rules we learn as children. Others we pick up from mentors of one sort or another. Most we develop the old-fashioned way — by making mistakes, falling down, picking ourselves up, and figuring out how not to do it again. However we learn the rules, they are the tools we use to deal with the challenges encountered in the course of building any business from scratch. Not that the rules guarantee success, but they do improve our chances significantly. We win more than we lose, and the longer we stay in the game, the more often we come out on top.

I believe that almost any person can learn these rules and use them to create the kind of life he or she wants. Granted, they will come more easily to some people than to others, and not everyone will have the same success in applying them. In business, as elsewhere, some individuals have God-given gifts that allow them to play the game better than others. We can’t all be Tiger Woods or Picasso or Shakespeare, but anybody can learn to play golf or paint or write a sonnet, and we can all learn how to be financially self-sufficient as well.

- Norm Brodsky