Here’s what’s on the menu today

• From a billion dollars to a billion regrets

• Paradoxes of Entrepreneurship - Work Hard Play Hard

• Interesting Read - Anything is possible if you pay the price

• Tweet for the week - The Icarus Paradox

“My net worth is zero after taking into account my liabilities. In summary, I do not hold any meaningful assets….”

There are many stories of an entrepreneur who had it all but then, something happened and everything was lost in the blink of an eye. This is nothing new in entrepreneurship and the reason why it happens is not so unique to any particular business. In fact, you may be surprised to know that most businesses fail for the same reasons like;

The inability to keep up with the competition, debts, poor management, lack of innovation, unfavorable policy, unfavorable market, poor business strategy, etc. However, most entrepreneurs were not so fortunate to have a father who was a business guru, and neither were they given the keys to half of a multimillion-dollar empire. So it begs the question, why would someone who had all of this, still fail woefully?

Anil Ambani is the second of two sons who inherited the fortunes of Reliances Industries founder and one of India’s business tycoons Dhirubhai Ambani. After his father died, Anil took over the operations of the financial services, telecom, and power aspects of his father’s business while his brother Mukesh was in charge of the oil and gas operations. Anil had the better deal at the time and soon, his net worth soared to a whopping $42 billion making him the sixth wealthiest person in the world according to Forbes.

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With his wealth and resources, it is easy to think that there is no way a man like that could fail. But you’d be wrong because Anil made many bad investment decisions that put him in so much debt and drove his business into the ground. And despite facing possible jail time for his debts, Anil stated that his net worth was “Zero” after a court asked him to set aside $100 million.

Today, Anil is barely worth a small fraction of his initial net worth, while his brother Mukesh is now considered the richest man in Asia. The case of the Ambani brothers is one that would bolster the notion that “entrepreneurs are born not made”. But what Anil lacked wasn’t talent but vision, a winning strategy, management, and decision-making skills, all of which can be learned. This proves that “money alone doesn’t guarantee business success,” but with the right skill sets, any entrepreneur can raise enough money to grow and sustain a business.

“Work Hard Play Hard”

You may have come across the phrase being used in many scenarios. Perhaps you didn’t give it so much thought then, but as simple as it sounds, work hard play hard is a conundrum. Take Elon Musk for example, he’s often quoted as saying he sometimes spent up to 120 hours per week working. On average, a regular employee spends about 40 hours working every week. So you get the idea.

Then consider this, Elon Musk has enough money to afford playing hard but he has less and less time to do so while an average employee who seems to have more time would not be able to afford “playing hard”, not without breaking the bank. This scenario is known as a paradox and entrepreneurs are faced with paradoxes like this on a daily basis. Another example is “Work Life balance”. It is a nice little phrase to throw around but one that anybody will find absolutely difficult to achieve.

And that is because both actions contradict each other, just like Work Hard Play Hard. If you want to become a successful entrepreneur, you will be required to dedicate an enormous amount of time to your business, this could mean sacrificing your social life and vice versa. Here is another paradox entrepreneurs struggle with - innovate to remain competitive but give the consumers a sense of familiarity. In essence, consumers instinctively go for something they are familiar with.

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So too much innovation could cost the business more harm than good and too little innovation apparently has the same result. One example that comes to mind is Apple. Long before the iPhone X was launched, Apple had used the Touch ID as the main security feature on their phones. Customers bashed the company for its lack of innovation. But when the Face ID, a new technology was launched with the iPhone X, customers bashed the company saying the technology was either not secure or working properly.

Despite being called a marvel, a study revealed that 40% of iPhone users won’t be using the Face ID to authenticate payments. Fast forward to this date, iPhone users now use Face ID for nearly everything, including digital payment. The lesson here is that paradoxes like this exist in entrepreneurship as in every other aspect of life, there is no way around that. It all comes down to making a choice and knowing that you would have to pay a price. The best of both worlds hardly exists for an entrepreneur.

It is either you work hard now and play hard later or you play hard now and risk losing your business.

You can either focus on building your business even if it means sacrificing your social life temporarily, or risk sacrificing your business for a blooming social life.

You may lose a few disgruntled customers today if you innovate but you may go out of business if you decide not to innovate and get run over by the competition.

It’s either the red or blue pill, you can’t have both.

Anything is possible if you pay the price

“You can be a millionaire in not a long period of time.

You could be an established expert on any topic.

You could be a successful business owner.

You could have deep spiritual understanding.

You could be the person you know within yourself you can be.

You can live the life you know within yourself you are meant to live.

But you have to pay the price.”

I came across this Medium article some time ago and I quickly saved it for later. I knew I would always come back to it and I have done so over and over again to remind myself that success has a PRICE. Every word, sentence, and line of thought seems to be talking to me specifically. I have read it so many times that I can almost hear the voice of the author in my head saying;

“..are you serious or still pretending? Do you really want it or are you still unsure? How many hours did you waste today? How many hours were you paying the price? NOTHING IN LIFE IS FREE…”

I agree, especially success. I made my decision a long time ago and I’ve been paying the price. How about you? Perhaps this article would speak to you just like it spoke to me.

Tweet for the week

A winning strategy eventually becomes a dead weight when you hold onto it for too long. Hence the reason many successful businesses fail suddenly despite sticking to their playbook. This is the Icarus Paradox