Is There a Shortcut to Business Success?

byTDenise

5.7K followers

Updated 5 years ago

One of the biggest questions everyone wants to know is whether there's a shortcut. I mean, tell me you haven't asked, "Is there a shorter way to achieve success?"

And to make matters worse, many people prey on this primitive desire. There's training after training that promises to give you the "quick route", and these creeps and scammers exist in just about every industry.

The Ingredients for Business Success

The unfortunate truth is Business is contingent on:

• Mastering a skill
  
• and, building the relevant social capital who will pay you to solve their problem -OR-knows someone who will pay for your solution

Unfortunately, there's no way to know how much time you'll take to master the skill or build relevant social capital. In order to know, you'd have to have a pretty accurate inventory of the status of your current skill level in comparison to your competitors, an inventory of your relevant social circle, and skills to compromise your social capital quickly.

There's no real shortcut except maybe mentorship, but let's discuss that (mentorship) on another post.

How Some People Seem to Get Success vs. Others Who Don't

For some people, they start their business by leveraging a skill they've been developing over time. Others, often approach business very optimistically and grossly underestimate what it takes.

Unfortunately, these "Gross Underestimators" often suffer from burnout and give up, or they experience years where they have to filter thru junk information they've acquired from somewhere.

What Dunning-Krueger Has to Say

A profound post I read today called "Most People Think This is a Smart Habit, but It's Actually Brain Damaging" talked about Junk information.

I'm doing the article a great disservice by summarizing. I recommend you check it out, but it's quite long.

In summary, It compared fast food to junk information: it's easily accessible and not so good for us. They went as far as to say that junk information is like brain disease and can even be deadly because we build faulty ideas on top of them.

For example: Some people browsing Youtube hear the idea "Online business can be done quickly, easily, and nearly effortlessly".

This idea may be accepted quickly, but it may take weeks, months, years, or even decades to rule this out. As a result, for all of the time they're in the delusion, they will rely on their confirmation bias and magnetize information that presents shiny objects, quick tactics, and overall, wastes of time UNTIL they decide to accomodate a new idea that says...

"Starting an online business may be enjoyable but it may require effort and lots of it."

The more you get into online business, the more you learn it's as detailed (if not more) than being an offline business owner, a nurse, doctor, or engineer. Being an internet marketer or internet entrepreneur is a legitimate career field that's WAAAYYY underestimated WAAAAYYY too often.

Going back to the article I read today...

The article was warning against being too receptive to random information because of the Dunning-Krueger Effect.

Have you heard of it? Well, if you haven't, let me explain...

According to Dunning-Krueger, "when we don’t know what we don’t know, we overestimate our abilities".

How Dunning-Krueger Affects You

This dangerous fact should prelude your business decisions, should circle in your mind before making a deal, and should help you proceed with caution in changes. When you're unfamiliar with something, it usually looks easier than it is.

Many of us WAers are guilty of this. Just go back to my first posts here. I was sure 6 months ago that I'd be full-time by now, but guess what?

I still have a ways to go...even after a very aggressive posting schedule, strategizing, and spending loads of time. I've created 139 blog posts on my primary site since 25 Feb. I've also created 35 pages and several product descriptions. I've attempted to be as helpful and valuable as possible with every piece of content. Added onto that, I created other websites (because I thought I would manage multiple but I decided not to focus on those later), and guess what I learned...

Takeaways

• Dunning-Krueger is real. I overestimated alot and you might too
  
• I love offering value using my skills online enough that I'll commit to it whether it ever brings me a full-time income or not (but I believe it will). Will you commit and go all in, or are you "trying things out"?
  
• I need to leverage my previous skills as much as possible. What previous skills can you leverage more?
  
• Social capital proceeds money. How much relevant social capital do you have and how can you improve it?
  

I'd love to hear your answers to my takeaway questions in the comments. Let's keep plugging along and change the world while we're at it.