1 00:00:01,010 --> 00:00:04,020 - When you're first starting your business, 2 00:00:04,020 --> 00:00:06,080 you may have a lot of confidence 3 00:00:06,080 --> 00:00:11,080 and belief in the idea that you're starting to work on. 4 00:00:11,080 --> 00:00:14,060 However, the idea is really just the very beginning, 5 00:00:14,060 --> 00:00:17,060 that sort of germinating seed of where you go, 6 00:00:17,060 --> 00:00:20,010 and it's important to realize as you're getting started 7 00:00:20,010 --> 00:00:21,040 that there's an enormous amount 8 00:00:21,040 --> 00:00:23,070 of uncertainty in front of you. 9 00:00:23,070 --> 00:00:26,080 Creating a business is not this process 10 00:00:26,080 --> 00:00:29,080 where you figure things out, and then just go do something. 11 00:00:29,080 --> 00:00:34,000 Instead, it's much more a series of endless experiments, 12 00:00:34,000 --> 00:00:35,060 many of which fail. 13 00:00:35,060 --> 00:00:37,090 So you're constantly coming up with new hypotheses 14 00:00:37,090 --> 00:00:39,050 for things that you want to do, 15 00:00:39,050 --> 00:00:42,020 ideas that might be big ones or little ones 16 00:00:42,020 --> 00:00:45,020 in the context of where you're going with your business. 17 00:00:45,020 --> 00:00:47,060 You're running these little experiments very quickly, 18 00:00:47,060 --> 00:00:49,020 you're trying something. 19 00:00:49,020 --> 00:00:53,040 If it fails, it's not bad, you learn from that failure 20 00:00:53,040 --> 00:00:55,010 and you incorporate that into what you're doing 21 00:00:55,010 --> 00:00:56,080 going forward. 22 00:00:56,080 --> 00:00:59,010 If it succeeds, that little experiment, 23 00:00:59,010 --> 00:01:00,040 you do a lot more of it. 24 00:01:00,040 --> 00:01:02,070 And so the idea is, you've now figured out a vector, 25 00:01:02,070 --> 00:01:04,010 or trajectory, that you want to go down. 26 00:01:04,010 --> 00:01:06,060 So you're trying to eliminate this uncertainty 27 00:01:06,060 --> 00:01:10,070 on a continual basis by running these little experiments. 28 00:01:10,070 --> 00:01:13,050 The essence of that, though, is along the way, 29 00:01:13,050 --> 00:01:14,090 in addition to this uncertainty, 30 00:01:14,090 --> 00:01:17,060 you have this layer of risk with everything you're doing. 31 00:01:17,060 --> 00:01:19,090 Each time you hire a new person, you're taking a risk. 32 00:01:19,090 --> 00:01:21,010 You're taking a risk on that person. 33 00:01:21,010 --> 00:01:23,000 Are they going to fit, are they going to be the right person 34 00:01:23,000 --> 00:01:24,080 for the role that you're having? 35 00:01:24,080 --> 00:01:28,010 Whenever you enter in a relationship with another party, 36 00:01:28,010 --> 00:01:30,090 whether it's an investor or a business partner 37 00:01:30,090 --> 00:01:32,060 or a distribution channel, 38 00:01:32,060 --> 00:01:34,040 you're taking some risk in the context of that. 39 00:01:34,040 --> 00:01:37,010 So the risk of a start up is not this global risk 40 00:01:37,010 --> 00:01:40,020 of how risky being an entrepreneur and start ups are, 41 00:01:40,020 --> 00:01:43,020 but the fact that so many times along the way, 42 00:01:43,020 --> 00:01:44,090 you're going to be trying new things, 43 00:01:44,090 --> 00:01:46,040 a lot of which won't work. 44 00:01:46,040 --> 00:01:48,090 And so your ability as an entrepreneur 45 00:01:48,090 --> 00:01:52,040 to deal with uncertainty is extremely important, 46 00:01:52,040 --> 00:01:54,050 and recognize that that uncertainty 47 00:01:54,050 --> 00:01:56,030 is something that you manage, 48 00:01:56,030 --> 00:01:58,050 not by feeling lots of anxiety about it, 49 00:01:58,050 --> 00:02:00,000 although you could, that's a normal thing 50 00:02:00,000 --> 00:02:01,060 that a lot of entrepreneurs feel, 51 00:02:01,060 --> 00:02:04,010 but instead trying to run these small experiments 52 00:02:04,010 --> 00:02:05,090 to eliminate the uncertainty 53 00:02:05,090 --> 00:02:08,000 so that when you do take a bigger risk, 54 00:02:08,000 --> 00:02:09,090 you're doing it with good information, 55 00:02:09,090 --> 00:02:12,000 well-informed from your own experience.