Success = Action + Learning

There was a time in the field of business when people needed funding for a new venture, they wrote a business plan to present to a bank. The bank judged whether the plan would become a profitable business based on how good the plan was written. Depending on the bank’s judgment, the business plan either attracted funding or received a no funding response.

The world of business has evolved a lot in the past few years, especially since the advent of the internet. Most multi-million or even billion dollar businesses today never had a business plan. Most businesses that have ended up becoming giants in their respective industries received funding without a business plan.

Venture capitalists and other business funders usually look out for the person making the pitch and the idea being pitched. Not everyone can build a business that is why the person making a pitch for funding holds the key to receiving capital. The other thing they look out for is the timing of the idea. There are ideas that couldn’t become businesses a few years ago that today will. Someone once said that there is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come. When an idea is ripe, a business plan is not necessary. A clever venture capitalist will jump on the idea just after listening to a five-minute pitch.

To get a business off the ground, a person must possess two fundamental beliefs. The first is that success comes from acting on the idea even before one has all the information. Testing the idea in the real market will give valuable information than to keep on analyzing without real action. Like they say, too much analysis brings about paralysis. Over analyzing without testing the idea is not the best idea.

The second thing the possessor of the idea should know is that information sometimes only comes to us when we act. You can’t know what you are capable of if you don’t act. As you act, pay attention to the feedback you are getting. The information that comes during the trial run is invaluable. All information, including failures, should be used as feedback to either improve on the product or service or to change some things. All information is valuable.

Therefore, to succeed, one needs to act first, and then learn. Our modern education has flipped this. We go to learn first and then act. Maybe that is why we have a lot of people that have degrees but cannot use their education because they have information but cannot apply it.

Success = Action + Learning, and then repeat this process over and over.