Sterling Terrell

smart ideas from books (mostly)

Asymmetric Opportunities To Tilt Luck

Asymmetric Opportunities To Tilt Luck

I have been pondering this tweet thread on asymmetric opportunities for a few days now.

This is nothing other than tilting luck in your favor by doing things that have:
A) low potential risk
B) high potential reward

The 9 Examples:

  • Go on first dates
  • Invest in startups
  • Start a small company
  • Create media
  • Create software
  • Go to a party
  • Live in a big city
  • Tweet
  • Build in public

But the asymmetric payoff of investing in startups has particularly piqued my interest at this point in my life.

For many of these, I am either already doing, or are no longer an option…

I blog, I tweet, I have been going to publish a book forever now…

But my wife would be less than pleased if I started dating again. 🤣

And yes – I wish I had considered all of this when I was 18.

A Leaders Necessary Exposure To Risk

A Leaders Necessary Exposure To Risk

I have been thinking about this tweet all day:

In business, you need some exposure to risk to be trusted.

Good grief, I mean, the number of executive board members, CEO’s, mid-level managers, and bureaucrats out there that pay virtually no price for making terrible decisions is mind-blowing.

The best analogy I can think of is how the average person treats a rental car vs. their own.

Maybe if it was your company – and your money – you would take fewer trips, buy fewer drinks, write off fewer mistakes, and make fewer excuses after losing money year after year.

How easy it is to spend someone else’s money…

I read somewhere that a company was looking for a CEO and that the only requirement – beyond general competency, experience, and know-how – was that they invest their entire life savings into the company.

That sounds like a good idea to me.

More?

Understand: Mangers need skin in the game.