Successful Rock Bottom

How I dealt with facing the Successful Rock Bottom, (a direct result of an achievement that doesn’t bring any physical/monetary gain.)

As an entrepreneur and innovator, who love to start new things, new projects, new departments, new and untested markets, and avenues at times for the sake of expansion and growth, or just out of curiosity and the sake of trying something new. Through trial and error failing and pivoting, remodeling and redesigning through pain and laughter ultimately we successfully bring it to life, and we get a good product to market fit where all that is left is to make money out of it, then we let other people, people who understand the art of scale (yeah I said it, it’s an art although it seems boring to me) to take it to the next level.

I call this the Successful Rock Bottom. If you are one of the Zero to One kind of people (the ones who from nothing create something really worth scaling), you would understand best why I called success the rock bottom. Allow me to explain, because your job as an innovator is essentially done, on the other hand, your project isn’t yet a real and true success since it has not scaled yet, yeah hopefully it is going to, but there is nothing you as the person who thought it all out can really add to the scaling process of the project, maybe some minor development tweaks that any developer can modify upon request of the people who can really scale it, but you just lost your job, in this project there is nothing really exciting to do or add, and on top of that the success of the project will only be measured only through the execution of the One the N person (the ones who can best scale something that already exist [the Copy paste’rs]).

A few months ago I was in a place of almost hitting this successful rock bottom again after facing many times in my life already. I saw myself schlepping with the release of the new project I was working on for a while, it was almost ready to go to scale, however, I tried to find excuses not to let it go yet, as I wanted to hold on to my occupation and I wasn’t ready to let it go, then I had an epiphany that I want to share.

“In order to successfully remain a player in the game, you have to repeatedly bet against yourself and consistently put in the maximum effort to put yourself out of business.”

In order to successfully remain a player in the game, you have to repeatedly bet against yourself and consistently put in the maximum effort to put yourself out of business.” Ultimately everyone is being put out of business, through technological advancements, when you do it yourself you have the chance to ride the wave and come out a winner otherwise we’ll be swallowed by it.

The following are 2 examples of successful companies in our recent history. Firstly, Apple a successful Computer company (after jobs return), decided to bet on music and released an iPod, which was somewhat competing against their music CD disks. At the same time, a laptop was released, which also create a direct competition with their desktop computers, a short while after the iPod was successful, they released an iPhone which killed the iPod, yet it assured that Apple remained the king in digital music, and iPad too was released which directly compete against their laptops.

Secondly, Amazon Kindle is a place where Amazon put their total paper book industry as a second class citizens, which is their core business, and Bazos current focus on Brick and Mortar retail from the first glance is in direct contradiction with their e-commerce model, yet we all anticipate great success with his cashless shopping experience and with his plans for Whole Foods plans, that is still open for our speculation, but one thing is certain that he is betting against his core concept online only, and it is good as it always pay up in the long run.

On the other hand when you look at blackberry, palm or blockbuster who were afraid to compete and bet against themselves, they are no longer in the game, and this holds true to the smallest company, if you want to be around in 5-10 years down the road, focus on betting against what you currently do, especially if you are successful, you have the biggest insights in your market, figure out how to serve your customer in a better cheaper and more efficient way using either some new tech or a new technique to provide a better experience, this will give the upper hand to survive the wave and a great chance to rise and not drown in the upcoming tide. The same is in a practical way, for every individual who wants to be relevant in their company and grow in their industry, they have to find ways to make themselves and their position obsolete. If you’re a great manager make sure you have implemented so many good processes and procedures that need not be done by anyone else in your company, then you can take on more things. If you are a great developer, figure out how you can learn the machine to do your biggest tasks, and you can get busy focusing on making that better until it is better than yourself and you will have to find ways how to defend humanity against AI. And the same goes for myself and all the 0 to 1 type of people (AKA creatives), we need to actively focus on putting ourselves out of occupation, completing our creation successfully, and happily face the rock bottom of success, as we hand off another great thing that other people can hopefully scale big.

Bringing It All Together

If you are a successful service provider in your industry and you fear the chance of being put out of business by technological advancements in the next decade, first I want to assure you that this is probably possible in the case of this current rate of tech growth. Therefore, for your own sake, start focusing on how you can actively put in effort to make your current business practices obsolete, bet on your industry’s future, on your current customers loyalty and on your own industry insights, this is the only way you will be able to mitigate any downfall and you will be able to ride the wave of technology and rise with the tide, if you can’t wrap your head around how to go about it, personally I have a passion in brainstorming new ideas, especially when it comes to enabling business services advancing, disrupting their industry or reaching the rock bottom of success, feel free to reach out to me.