There are no warning signs in business. If there were, many people would still go over the cliff. So let’s invert. How do you guarantee failure in a new business? • Pick a business you know nothing about. • Partner with terrible people. • Refuse to learn from those who’ve done it before. • Change strategies every other week. • Set no clear incentives. • Keep no scoreboard. • Treat failure like a disease. • Bury mistakes fast. • Under-capitalize. • Ignore your numbers. • Ignore your team and customers. • Stop when it gets hard. • View every problem as a disaster instead of a lesson. • Fail to adapt. • Use outdated tools. • Blame others. • Lie. Be Unreliable! • Do what you like instead of what the business needs. ETC…. (We could go on… right ;) Flip these around and you’ve got a decent checklist for survival. The painful part is how obvious they look in hindsight—yet how often we all trip up on some of them. Especially the one where we chase the shiny new thing instead of doubling down on the old and compounding boring things.