What Makers Aspiring To Be Entrepreneurs Can Learn From A Red D20
If you're trying to build a business, it can be tough to face failure after failure after failure.
Most people online talk about success, so no one might have prepared you for the number of failures you'll encounter before even 1 success. Failure is part of the game, so you have to keep playing in order to have any shot at winning even a little.
Don't just take my word for it.
I recently finished reading Alex Hormozi's book, $100M Leads, which includes an analogy that stuck with me so much, I 3D printed a massive red D20.
The Two Red Dice
You and another aspiring entrepreneur are each given a single die, one with 20 sides and one with 200 sides.
1 side of each die is green, but all the others are red. If a roll is a red, nothing happens and you can roll again. But, if a roll is green, you get a point, another random side of your die turns green, and you can roll again.
Unfortunately, neither of you know whether your die has 20 or 200 sides because you can only see the results each time either of you roll.
The Entrepreneur Who Quits
Let's start with how the other entrepreneur plays the game.
They roll a few times and red comes up every time. They're getting frustrated and start blaming the game for unfairly penalizing their amazing rolls with red results. Finally they roll 1 green and celebrate instead of rolling for several turns before finally starting to roll reds again.
Ultimately, they quit the game because it's unfair, not winnable, and too many people are already rolling in their niche.
How You're Going To Roll Differently
Now for how you're going to play the game.
You start out the same, rolling red several times in a row. Finally you roll a green! However, no matter whether you roll a red or green, you immediately re-roll the die.
Ultimately, you get to a point where it's more likely for you to roll a green each roll than roll a red.
So Who Has The 20 Sided Die?
You might have figured it out, but how many sides your die has doesn't actually matter.
What matters is that regardless of the outcome of your roll, you keep rolling. You learn from your red rolls, but don't let the green rolls get to your head. Because every green roll adds another green side, your chances of rolling green can only go up.
The name of the game isn't trying to roll better than the other player, but to be resilient and continue rolling no matter what.