IGNORANCE CAN LEAD TO SUCCESS

 

IGNORANCE CAN LEAD TO SUCCESS

How many people have you heard say one of these sentences?

“I had this brilliant business idea, but someone discouraged me about it.”

“I wish I had worked for myself and not stayed employed all my life.”

Or even, “I have so many great ideas but other people’s views keep discouraging me.”

There are many things that can stop someone from starting a business. But listening too much to other people`s views and over analyzing the idea are the worst two things that can keep you stuck at the starting line.

 

Have you ever asked yourself why many smart people are employees instead of entrepreneurs?

Smart people are good at digesting complex matters and finding solutions to the most challenging problems in the world. However, when it comes to entrepreneurship many of them are perennial failures. So, how comes they don't they use their incredible brain power to their advantage?

Smart people know all reasons why something won’t work. For instance, they know all too well the risks behind each and every business idea out there. Given an opportunity to start, they overanalyze the situation trying to balance between its advantages and disadvantages. 

At the end of the day they don’t do anything concrete with their lives simply because they think they know too much. They keep analyzing and questioning other ideologies until the cows come home.

Do you know why most not-so-smart people are great entrepreneurs?

 

Because Ignorance Can Lead to Success.

Sometimes what you don’t know just might help you.

Let me share with you this two short stories.

Story 1 

In the late 1990’s my uncle who was living in the USA got an itch to start investing. He had a decent sum of cash sitting in a savings account and he decided it was time to put his money to work.

The savings account returned about 1.5% a year so any return over and above that would be a successful investment. 

At the time the dot com boom was at its inception and everyone was pumping money into tech stocks. My uncle didn’t fully understand the stock market and its inherent risks, so instead of investing in tech stocks, he purchased 15 acres of land in an upcoming neighbourhood near Hilton Head Island, South Carolina.

He never lost a dime when the dot com bubble went bust, and even after the recent downturn in the housing market, his property is currently worth 8 times what he paid for it.

 

Story 2 

About a year ago a friend of mine wrote an e-Book and put it up for sale on Amazon Kindle. I jokingly pointed out to her that all of the information in the e-Book was readily available on other blogs/websites for free and indexed correctly by Google. 

She was disappointed when I mentioned this but she left her e-Book up for sale anyway. We both assumed that it wouldn’t sell. We were wrong. The e-Book has been sold for a sum of nearly Ksh.250,000 since last year.

The Lessons

Two significant Lessons:

The popular way of doing things may not always be the best way. Sometimes taking action based on ignorance beats taking no action at all.

Knowledge is, no doubt, important. But occasionally what we know or what we think we know, hinders our ability to take action and make sound judgements. We become consumed with commonly accepted practices and thus fail to innovate.

We follow the herd instead of thinking for ourselves. 

Doing things the same way as they have always been done is a sure way of never getting ahead. Just because other people have done things a certain way doesn’t make it right. Quite often you will find the exact opposite to be true.

 

Being ignorant of popular opinion is a good mindset to be in. It allows you to form your own opinions based on first-hand experience. It gives you the freedom to think and to innovate. Oddly enough, the right kind of ignorance can give you the power to succeed.

Years from today, you will be old, retired and not as strong as you are now. 

Whether you choose to pursue your ideas and achieve them, or simply relax and enjoy over analyzing ideas and listening to other people's views and discouragements, time will still pass. 

No matter what you are doing (or plan to do), time will always keep moving; it’s a train that never stops.

And what you do with your time is entirely up to you. Your goal in life should be to achieve your dreams while you still have time.

It’s up to you to decide how much of your time you want over analyzing ideas and listening to other people's views and discouragements to steal from you.

Only time will tell.