Business Success Stories

I love good business success stories.

Next to stories of Caribbean pirates roving the boundless seas, and heroes darting about in the Arabian Nights, nothing thrills me like a ripping yarn of commercial derring-do. For sheer entertainment value, such stories are very hard to beat.

As sources of instruction or inspiration, however, they all leave me totally cold. Even if I wished to be a Caribbean pirate or Arabian hero, I very much doubt that knowing all about ancient piracy or heroics would necessarily equip me for life in the 21st Century. As for studying business success stories - of what other business people did in other places or times - this too is of very limited practical value.

The fact is: successful entrepreneurs are experts in their own specific times and places, and their key skill is in extracting profitable business out of that specific situation. If Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg or indeed any other entrepreneur you care to name were, as an adult, suddenly to be dropped penniless into, say, into Ancient China or Ancient Egypt, I think they would struggle to even make a living. Their chance of actually getting rich would be very small indeed.

So how relevant are business success stories to you, as you wrestle with making your way in your own personal time and place. The answer is: about the same relevance as the stories of Blackbeard the Pirate and Sinbad the Sailor, which is not all that much.

Yes, stories of other people’s success in the face of daunting odds can be very inspiring, especially when you are feeling all gloomy and miserable. But they very rarely if ever teach you what to do in your own personal situation. The heroes of these stories never had to deal with your exact situation, so, when it comes to planning your next step, sorry, but you are absolutely on your own.

Does this mean, then, that there is nothing that can be learned from business success stories, and that they should be totally ignored? The answer is yes and no.

Yes, it is sometimes useful to think about the different ways successful people chose to become successful, but no, it is generally useless to try to copy them exactly.

Sadly, successful entrepreneurs have generally become successful by solving problems that you will never face. What they did that was so incredibly clever, therefore rarely has any usefulness in your personal situation.

This leads us to two basic rules for succeeding in business:

Be very cautious about copying the actions of successful entrepreneurs. No matter how profitable they once were, they are unlikely to work so well for you;

Be very cautious about making a successful entrepreneur your main business adviser (unless they made their name as a professional adviser). The skills that make people very successful in business also usually make them very unsuccessful as advisers.

In summary, then, by all means take pleasure in reading about the good fortune of others, and take courage from their determination to succeed - but never make the mistake of thinking that their actions are automatically relevant to you.

SBI!