To succeed, don’t follow the crowd

Let’s say you decide to pursue something where you see opportunity and all anyone else sees is problems.

Get ready to be ridiculed.

Some of your closest advisers, friends and even family may think they’re doing you a favour by saying things like:“It’ll never work.”“You’re kidding, right?”

“Don’t you know it’s been tried before?”“What makes you think you can pull it off? Do you think you’re so much smarter than everyone else?”Oh, it gets better.

If your venture doesn’t work, you’ll hear “I told you so, but you wouldn’t listen!”

If your plan does in fact work, don’t expect to gloat: Your former detractors will merely say: “He got lucky.”In my 40 years of running businesses, I’ve found that the greatest comfort is often found in the middle of a vast herd of sheep, all moving in the same direction.

They can all console themselves that their judgment was no worse than everyone else’s.

However, the greatest opportunities and profits are found on paths least travelled — or where there was no path at all before you came along. Are you in business for comfort or for profit?

Rule No. 3: Sometimes it feels wrong because it is wrong.

I just finished saying the most profitable course of action may be uncomfortable and lonely.

But, make sure you don’t justify a purely emotional decision by thinking: “It feels wrong, so I must be on the right track.”

You can get too comfortable with being a contrarian.

I built a company that was so utterly different from the rest of the collection industry that it was tempting for me always to be different, just for the sake of making another splash.

Instead, I retained some industry-standard structures like accounting, and innovated only when truly necessary.

Bottom line: Follow that unpopular path only for the right reason.