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1/ One of my big learnings over the last ~10 years is that the reality of business has a surprising amount of detail.
2/ One of the implications of this is that a novice reads some case custody or starts with some blank spreadsheet of what the “optimal” strategy is and usually the one that looks optimal is one about which you are most ignorant
3/ It looks optimal precisely because you are ignorant about it. Whereas the thing that will actually work looks covered in worts because you understand all the flaws and limitations.
4/ A common example is that someone will start a business in a field completely unrelated to their professional expertise.
5/ "I am a cybersecurity expert but I high-end pet furniture is a growth market so I'll start a business doing that"
6/ In marketing it often looks like jumping from channel to channel based on whatever the "hot" new thing is only to spend a bunch of money realizing that it, too, is not perfect.
7/ I think a helpful frame is to think about the "adjacent possible."
8/ You're really good at cybersecurity but you want to switch from doing it for Fortune 500's to SMBs? Super plausible and will probably work.
9/ Mark Ford phrased this as "Anytime we've tried to move more than one step away, we've failed"
10/ You can get pretty far moving one step at a time and, somewhat counterintuitively, it's faster than trying to move by leaps and bounds.
