Bad first experiences

Are we cursed to have them?

My first Fiverr client ghosted me. My first attempt to buy a business flopped. My first ad campaign didn’t yield any sales. In fact, I even got banned from Google and Bing Ads trying to launch it. There are so many more, I can’t remember them all.

How many businesses make it?

Just Google “What percentage of businesses succeed?” You’ll find that from the get-go, you have roughly a 50% chance of getting past the first year, and it goes downhill from there. We can assume that we’re talking about registered businesses. I bet it’s way higher for those “side projects” that went nowhere.

You’re going to experience one

Based on that, the chances of your first experience being a bad one are high. If it’s not bad, it’s probably not going to work out.

That’s life

It’s just what it is, and it’s okay. The sooner I accept that, the better.

The worst is to make a pattern or trend out of one situation and form an opinion on that. It’s almost always more nuanced than “I did X and got Y therefore X doesn’t work.”

I always remind myself that there needs to be at least 3 occurrences in order to get a hint of a pattern. Before that it’s just too random to learn anything.

No hate for the roses

After a first bad experience, we can either keep going or choose to leave that bad first experience behind forever. But we might cross out any potential future benefits if we do.

I’ll leave you with this quote from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (Author of The Little Prince).

It is madness to hate all roses because you got scratched with one thorn. To give up on your dreams because one didn’t come true. To lose faith in prayers because one was not answered, to give up on our efforts because one of them failed. To condemn all your friends because one betrayed you, not to believe in love because someone was unfaithful or didn’t love you back. To throw away all your chances to be happy because you didn’t succeed on the first attempt. I hope that as you go on your way, you don’t give in nor give up!

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What’s something you’d like to give a second chance to? For me, it was coding. I was so frustrated by it that I concluded I hated it and avoided it for years. But I gave it a second chance recently, and I kind of like it now. What about you? Anything that comes to mind?

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3 juicy links of the week

1. How to find ideas to build

   1. A very simple methodology to brainstorm ideas based on your current skills and check them against a potential demand in the market.

2. All in on platforms?

   1. A great read about build on platform. Everyone has the same concern of platform risk and potential changes or bans. But I agree with the author, might as well milk it to the last drop and build a cushion for safety to figure out the next move.

3. i made this indie game and it changed my life

   1. This video blew my mind. The guy got lucky. But look at how much work and effort he’s put into the launch of his game on Steam. Video games are a risky business. But damn, I’m impressed by the level of knowledge he acquired on the platform and essentially managed to take advantage of it by studying it inside out.