Be a Risk Taker – The First Mover Advantage
The principle of any business established to make profit is very simple “ Profit is the reward for risk bearing”. This holds true not only in businesses but also in our personal lives where success and failures are defined by the level of risk taking ability and the maturity of the risk taker in making the risk convert into an advantage more often than not.
My own experiences in risk taking have been phenomenal. To most of my colleagues, I am a big risk taker. However few know that my risk taking ability has been derived out of several positive behavioral traits that have given me a far higher benefit than the rest. To add on top of it, it has been a result of an incremental risk taking where I have lost more than what I gained initially, but eventually my experiences helped me to come out of most of the bigger situations later.
For me, risk taking is driven by the principles of first mover advantage where only few have an opportunity to make it.
In this blog, I would like to briefly give an overview on how you can be a risk taker and win in most of the situations.
- Develop the habit of knowing your ecosystem: Understanding what is changing around you and what others have done to be successful is an important learning tool. I have seen, most of us only get swayed away by the big success we see around us but fail to even notice the failures. I have always given more importance to understand how and why others fail and seek the difference between those who have been successful.
- Prepare for a backup: Any risk may have an outcome which at times may rob you of the strength to venture into any other. Working out a plan B or going for small incremental risks to test the waters normally is highly recommended. For those who can afford bigger risk, one must take the chance.
- Have the ability to face the challenge: Any venture or new initiative will be only successful if that is backed up with tireless working and focus on the outcome. Before you jump into fray for getting some results for yourself, think several times if you can do justice by spending time and energy for a substantial period before you can see the results coming. This is the place where most of us fail. Having enough patience and ability to work under pressure for long time and without any results can be a rare trait, but those who exhibit, almost always find themselves ahead of the pack.
- Develop marketing and selling abilities: Any new venture cannot be backed up by others unless you are convinced yourselves about the same. Selling your idea and marketing it well is almost always the reason for faster and bigger success. Enterprising individuals mostly fail to understand the reason of their failure in their ventures, which almost all the time is around the fact that they have poor selling abilities.
While there is a lot more to being successful in risk taking, I have found these four areas determining most of the outcome in any risk one has to take.
