Risk vs. gambling - what's the difference?
P.S.: This is chapter three of my book "The Naked Salesman".
Nothing of any real significance has been born from playing it safe.
Throughout history the great thinkers and doers have embraced change and harnessed risk.
Yes, change can be risky, but change in the hands of bold and virtuous people is something to behold.
To change your situation, a risk is required.
If you desire to be the best at what you do you must collaborate with risk.
To transform your industry, you must harness risk.
To change the world means to embrace and personify risk, and the bigger the risk the greater the reward, always.
Risk versus gambling
Risk is not gambling; in fact, it’s quite the opposite.
Gambling relies purely on chance — at best, calculated chance, but chance nonetheless.
If you feel compelled to place your future and your business on chance and prayer alone, then go for it.
I, however, would choose risk over chance any day. You can control risk, but you can’t control chance. Chance in business is simply applying an idea and believing it will work because other people are already doing it.
Chance doesn’t require any creativity, forward-thinking or strategy — you simply roll the dice and hope for the best. On the other hand, risk in business qualifies as entrepreneurialism. Some of you are already entrepreneurs and don’t even know it.
What is an entrepreneur?
Dictionary.com: a person who organises and manages any enterprise, especially a business, usually with considerable initiative and risk.
As an entrepreneur, you control your destiny.
You create and manage your most important enterprise of all: you! So you’re in control, you’re the boss, and you call the shots.
Whether you’re in a sales team and have no authority, full-time employed, at university, or running your own business — it’s up to you.
It’s time to make whatever it is that you’re passionate about happen.
And to make it happen, you’ll have to take a risk or two or three.
To create an exceptional business you must take risks and you must learn to dance with failure.
If you don’t dance with failure you’re playing it safe, and as we have established that’s what everyone else is already doing. The bottom of the pyramid is where everyone is doing, saying and selling the same thing in the same way.
Same!
Without risk there’s no innovation, no creativity, no real opportunity to grow and evolve, no hope and no likelihood of a better tomorrow.
Risk offers the opportunity to face challenges that will help you learn what you need to grow and develop.
Without risk, there is nothing but the same.
If you enjoy being governed and defined by fear, hallelujah!
But I don’t.
I choose to be on the edge with passionate people, gazing out over the valley of what is and contemplating what could be, marching with the heretics, innovators and rainmakers — the people I consider real leaders. The real deal, not followers, never, ever content with what merely is because someone said it is so; those who inspire and change the status quo. The believers, who see more, feel more and be more, and empower others to do the same.
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