Why I’m an Entrepreneur Who Is Afraid To Fail, and You Should Be Too

Success isn’t about risk tolerance, it’s about risk mitigation

Photo by Fionn Claydon on Unsplash

I’d like to debunk some conventional wisdom about success and failure in business. Namely, this broken circle of logic:

A. Entrepreneurs and business leaders have to take risks in order to succeed.

B. Younger people are more likely to take risks than older people.

C. When taking on a new challenge or starting a new business, older entrepreneurs and business leaders are more likely to be successful than their younger counterparts.

A plus B does not equal C. Why?

Conventional advice about risk and failure is usually poetic garbage

Most of the platitudes associated with risk and failure are often just a bunch of word salad — phrasing that sounds profound when you first hear it, but on reflection doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.

Take your pick from these Successory-style mantras that I know you’ve heard before:

• Fortune favors the bold.
• Go big or go home.
• Fail nine times and get up 10.