How close are you to your security blanket?
It would be an understatement to say the last 12 months have been tough. And yet this year’s Sunday Times Rich List was almost beacon-like in its ability to give us hope. Here were people of all ages, and I do mean ALL ages, managing to grow their businesses exponentially during the only global pandemic most of us will ever experience. In fact, and I know this doesn’t really speak to most of us, but it is fascinating… according to the Sunday Times, more people became billionaires in the past year than ever before!
What was different about those who’ve succeeded in an environment where many have been plunged into depression, despondency and debt? Of course they knew their market and had sublime confidence in their product but what else? Heard of Denis Swerdlov? His UK-based electric vehicle start-up, Arrival, launched on Nasdaq this March and was valued at £10 billion, making it the most valuable flotation of a British company to date, and it has yet to make a sale. Then there’s Debbie Bestwick who started working in a video games shop at 16, founded Team17 in 1990 and took her company public in 2018; then it was valued at £200 million and today £900 million. What’s the secret? Debbie and her team make games they love playing. Kelly Choi’s first business went bust, but she had an idea for her second: she wanted to deliver the best sushi to the west that combined convenience and quality. She did. Now she and her husband preside over a vast Sushi Daily empire of over 1,000 kiosks and supermarkets across Europe and their joint worth is £413 million.
Perhaps the other big difference between those who did really well and those who didn’t get close, is the tight grip some of us have on our security blankets. If we’re risk averse we’ll avoid those knife-edge decisions, those difficult choices that could result in losing it all. We’re realists with families to support, mortgages to pay, but that blanket might be the only obstacle between success and plodding along and, if we’re plodding along, we’re actually going backwards.
Taking a risk means failure can follow, and it does for many, but as the old phrase goes: ‘If you win, you’ll be happy; if you lose, you’ll be wise.’ If you lose, you can try again.