You Are Not Ready. We would avoid a lot of mistakes and failures if we had someone whisper those words into our heads every now and then.
We often rush ourselves into things when we not ready, jump into a new relationship when we haven’t fully healed from the effects of the previous one.
Launching a product that is not ready for market or go on a cap raise when the company doesn’t yet tick all the boxes to do so.
An example of this I can remember was in an episode of Billions when Lara, Bobby Axelrod’s wife asks him to help her with a cap raise from outside money. He replied by asking if she’s sure that she’s ready. She said she’s ready.
After going on a cap raise meeting organized by Axe. She told him that she wasn’t happy with how it went because she was treated like she was just the wife and her business wasn’t ready.
The gem here is what Axe replied with, he said “I tried to tell you, you weren’t ready but you wouldn’t hear it from me”. When she asked why not, he answered “What is it that you do that you’re the best in the world at? You offer a service you didn’t invent, a formula you didn’t invent, a delivery method you didn’t invent. Nothing about what you do is patentable or a unique user experience. You haven’t identified an isolated market segment, haven’t truly branded your concept”.
We never really ask ourselves the hard questions first before jumping into the next stage of our lives and the results are often failure and having to admit to ourselves in shame and defeat, “I was not ready”.