Many of the best business folks, entrepreneurs and even just true lovers of life have been “out there”. Some aggressive folks have larger than life personalities, some even boorish, arrogant and tough to be around at time. Other aggressive business peopleare more demure, subdued and even somewhat introverted. When I talk about being aggressive in business it does not necessarily represent a personality trait but rather a way in which decisions and risks are researched, evaluated, reviewed, taken and managed. People who are prepared to take risks, be aggressive and fail (sometimes massively) if persistent are the ones we hear and read about eventually.
A real life example to validate. My wife and I enjoy Euchre and play on our iPhone’s. One of the interesting features is a stats page that tracks your percentages. In looking at my stats I notice the following:
Hands 349 Won 318 Lost
Tricks 1,557 Won 1,437 Lost
Pretty mediocre performance but the interesting stat is this:
I called trump 165 times and won 141 (85%) of the time. So 25% of the hands I played I called trump (which seems statistically predictable with 4 players). This suggests to me that I HAVE NOT been overly aggressive in calling trump given you would think that if you are neither conservative nor aggressive you would call trump about 25% of the time.
The risk in being more aggressive in Euchre (as in business) is the unknown variable…in this case what does your partner have in their hand. I will repeat this experiment making a concerted effort to be more aggressive. Not STUPID aggressive but in a calculated way where I trust more that my partner has a trick up their sleeve. I’ll report back on the results and see what conclusions the data present.
Here is my question and my challenge….ARE YOU AGGRESSIVE ENOUGH??? I’m not talking about turning the dial from 2 to 9, I means moving from a 3 to a 4 and seeing what happens, then moving from 4 to 5 and seeing what a difference it means to your business or your life.
I intend to start to turn the dial…join me and lets track our journey together here.
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How to bring a product to market / A very rare interview with Sean Ellis – Venture Hacks
Posted on 25. Feb, 2010 by Paul Marshall.
via venturehacks.com I flaggeded this using Instapaper back in December when it first came out from Nivi at Venture Hacks and finally got around to reading it on the plane on my flight home from IBM Pulse last night. I highly recommend that regardless of what stage your tech company is in (or you think [...]
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Things To Think About E Book View more presentations from Paul Marshall. I was asked to contribute to a book that was being pulled together by Terry O’Hanlon from Reliabilityweb.com (a thought leader in our space). Terry did a great job of collecting thoughts from many senior and very experienced folks in the Operations and [...]
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For some time now I have been meaning to move my blog to a more professional format and focus on providing meaning regular guidance and thoughts for my audience. I have a full time job as most of you know running a great Company and working with a great group of people at Ivara Corp. [...]
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Outlier via youtube.com OK so I am a big Neil Peart fan and a bit of a drum geek but having heard Neil speak and his story it is an excellent example of Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000 hr rule in his Outlier book. (I have linked to my favorite solo of his on Youtube for my [...]
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via startuplessonslearned.com I know I am late to the game but I FINALLY ordered my copy of “The Four Steps to the Epiphany” by Steve Blank….can’t wait to read it as it has been one of the single most frequently recommended read from folks. Not exactly an early adopter on this one but I’m hoping [...]
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Updated Customer Development Image | Market By Numbers | Marketing Help
Posted on 22. Jan, 2010 by Paul Marshall.
via market-by-numbers.com Really great illustrative piece of work by Brant Cooper that nicely outlines the customer evoluation…go to Brant’s Market By Numbers blog and add to your reader if you are at all interested in customer development. Posted via web from Paul’s posterous //
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The hardest part about making good software that ships on time is knowing what and when to sacrifice. As programmers and designers, we often fall in love with our requirements and are unable to kill our darlings. We mistake what we said we’ll do with what must be done. It’s rarely so; you can always [...]
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via youtube.com I think it is fair to say that perhaps the best business lessons of our time were not taught by Rocky Balboa however I came across this courtesy of @msuster and his blog Both Sides of The Table (http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/). For all entrepreneurs, startups and business folks this is an important lesson to remember. [...]
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One of the biggest voices in Social Media Chris Brogan has a new post up today which includes the above diagram that Chris put together which is one of the most illustrative and on point I have seen. The diagram, and Chris’s post, clearly articulate his theory of Home Base and Outposts. Check out and [...]
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Relocated and Refocused!
- Follow Up to "Delight" Post
- Invest in Your Community for the Compound Interest
- #DemoCampToronto18 Thoughts
- BE Aggressive!
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Paul Marshall: Fair point Matt, there is a fine line between bein...
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Matt Bertulli: This is actually something I practice quite a bit....
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Daryl Mather: Hi Paul, I like this post. It really made me st...
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Robin: I would also add to your post that strategy and im...
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James: It got me thinking about Data Mining and this whol...
