Last week I repeatedly heard a strong contender for the most stupid idea I’ve come across on this platform (which is really saying something):

You shouldn’t consider what successful entrepreneurs think and do because of the survivorship bias. 

What is the survivorship bias you ask? One article describes it as “The act of focusing on successful people, businesses, or strategies and ignoring those that failed.”

Another calls it “a tendency to get carried away by a rare success story without considering similar examples of failure.” 

Articles on the subject conclude that we are “easily fooled by success stories.” And that it’s “important to remember attempting to recreate the success of the successful won’t necessarily translate into similar results.”

Are these people serious?

First, think of a discipline where studying the past masters isn’t part of the curriculum. There isn’t one. 

Business is literally the only discipline I can think of where people are encouraged to ignore the advice of people who have actually succeeded in favor of taking advice from people who have accomplished next to nothing. This seems pretty stupid to me.

Every successful business person I know takes advice from other successful business people who have real, lived experience and a demonstrable track record. Why? The difference between theory and practice is bigger in practice than in theory. This is the biggest lesson you learn from reading about how things played out in the real world. 

Second, read the biographies of the greatest entrepreneurs and you will find that they aren’t success stories at all. They are failure stories! They are failing over and over and over and over and over again and eventually succeeding. Or succeeding then failing then succeeding again. Churchill was right: “Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.” 

Of course there is luck and context involved — there is in anything. Of course eating the same breakfast as Larry Ellison isn't going to make you into him. Very few people are stupid enough to think that. But...

Third, these stories inspire people. It is exciting to see other people accomplish their dreams and think it might be possible for us to do the same. It is human nature to be inspired by great achievements, and there is nothing wrong with dreaming big and aspiring to follow in a titan's footsteps.

Somebody has to win Olympic gold, build a brilliant business, invent breakthrough products or technologies and do things that have never been done before. Why not you? Don't let an armchair expert who's read The Art of Thinking Clearly talk you out of it before you've even begun! 

Hose me with hate in the comments.

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