Dominate the competition
This article was written for the Tony Robbins blog by Raegan Moya-Jones, founder of aden + anais, and is inspired by content contained in her new book, What it Takes: How I Built a $100 Million Business Against the Odds.
One of the most common tropes of the successful entrepreneur is that you must quit your job to show dedication and have the time and energy to build a business. Aside from the fact that this is clearly not true based on my experience building aden + anais, a baby goods company that went on to become a $100 million dollar global brand, some of the most famous entrepreneurs in the world kept their jobs until their start-ups were evolved enough to become much safer bets. Even Steve Wozniak of Apple, Pierre Omidyar of eBay, and Phil Knight of Nike, practiced hybrid entrepreneurship.
I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest that when it comes to entrepreneurs, an aversion to risk might not be the problem.
On the contrary, it’s the myth of entrepreneur as risk-taker that has the potential to do far more damage – whether by deterring women (and men!) from starting businesses because they don’t fit the stereotype, or by discouraging potential investors because they wrongly perceive caution, discretion, and risk aversion to be negative traits.
Dominate the competition
Perhaps we should consider what risk-taking means in the first place. What one person deems risky – based on a million little factors, from the size of their bank account to their place in the social order – another might view as harmless. Some of us think starting a business is inherently risky and that finding and keeping a full-time job is the safe bet. However, counting on your employer to be the sole provider of your income is a huge risk. Most people don’t understand that they can be fired at any time, or the company could fold – they falsely believe they have security. Starting a business might be enormously risky for someone with $200,000 worth of student loan debt (and no guarantee of immediate income), but for someone like me, who had income in the form of a full-time job to fall back on, it wasn’t particularly risky at all.
