The entrepreneur’s choice: 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 the future of your business on chance and prayer alone, then go for it. I, however, 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. Even worse is doing so because other people are already doing it. Chance doesn’t require any creativity, forward thinking or strategy — you simply roll the dice, close your eyes and hope for the best, fingers crossed. 

On the other hand, genuine risk in business qualifies as entrepreneurialism. Some of you are already entrepreneurs and don’t even know it yet. 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.  So you’re in control, you’re the boss, you call the shots. Whether you’re full-time employed, at university, or running your own small business ― it’s up to you. It’s time to make whatever it is that you’re passionate about happen, to make it happen, you’ll have to take a risk or two or three.

To create a successful business you must learn to dance with failure. If you don’t dance with failure you’re playing it safe, and as we all know that’s what everyone else is already doing. The bottom of the pyramid is where everyone is, saying, selling and doing the same thing in the same way.

Without risk there’s no room for innovation or creativity, no real opportunity to grow and evolve, little 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 push forward.

Without risk, there is nothing but same. If you enjoy being governed and defined by fear, Hallelujah! I prefer 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, crazies and innovators — the people I consider real leaders.

The real deal, not followers, never content with what merely is just because someone said it’s 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.

Trent Leyshan is the founder of  BOOM! Sales and the author of OUTLAW & The Naked Salesman.