You’re a risk taker, right ?
Everybody seems to think if you’re an entrepreneur you’re a risk taker. So you must be a gambler too – playing poker, placing bets online, and visiting Vegas regularly. It’s true for some, not for me. Taking calculated risks is necessary as an entrepreneur, but losing control and counting on luck is never a good plan.
I’ve been to Las Vegas many times, including about thirteen consecutive years during my time in the computer business visiting the annual COMDEX exposition with 50,000 to 100,000 other attendees, where the casinos and hotels used to complain, “These freakin’ engineers and computer geeks don’t spend enough and don’t gamble with all the money they’ve got.” It’s probably still true for the tech billionaires and entrepreneurs of today, they don’t like to gamble and lose.
But it’s hard to ignore the current gambling boom with the recent de-regulation of gambling and advertising for sports betting at every live and televised event. It’s a very profitable business growing from $7 billion a year in America in 2018 to nearly $150 billion in 2024.
Much of the rapid growth comes from the widespread availability of betting apps which offer betting on every possibility you can think of and provide instant real-time results – The next touchdown by the Cowboys will be called back for a holding penalty on the offense; the next goal scored by Connor McDavid will be a backhand shot through the five-hole. Place your bets now!
Most of the sports betting is being done by high-earning young men who can afford the expensive indulgence. But critics argue that profits are being made by pushing an unhealthy and dangerous gambling addiction and ruining lives without sufficient regulatory controls on both the advertising and the betting and without sufficient support and treatment for those who succumb to the addiction. Like the freedom to indulge in other addictive vices from smoking to alcohol to pornography, governments and businesses are attracted to the revenue opportunities, but they need to re-invest some of their revenues in preventing the harms that arise.
So what can entrepreneurs learn from the gambling world? Maybe you should invest in a casino or a betting app.
But you should probably stick to your own business and control the urge to bet big on a risky new venture. As Bill Gates advised computer entrepreneurs, “It’s OK to fail often, but fail fast and avoid the big risky decisions that could kill your business.”
Or as Uncle Ralph says in DON’T DO IT THE HARD WAY – The Seven Biggest Mistakes that Entrepreneurs Make and How to Avoid Them, don’t decide, “That was easy, let’s do it again!” You may have made a lot of money in your business, but that didn’t mean you got smarter.
Maybe you were just lucky.
Be better. Do Better. Be an Enlightened Entrepreneur.
Del Chatterson, your Uncle Ralph
Learn more about Enlightened Entrepreneurship at: LearningEntrepreneurship.com
Read more of Uncle Ralph's advice for Entrepreneurs in Don't Do It the Hard Way & The Complete Do-It-Yourself Guide to Business Plans - 2020 Editions.
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