Know When To Use Reality Distortion, and When Not To Use It

Entrepreneurship is so difficult.  There is a time to be stubborn, and a time to be realistic.  One of the things I really enjoyed about Walter Isaacson’s book about Steve Jobs was his description of how Jobs used “reality distortion theory”.   Jobs would seemingly will things to be done.  Why did it work?

Number one, he had assets on his side.  He wasn’t trying to make payroll.  He was trying to launch a product.  I see entrepreneurs exhibit the stubborn characteristics of being an entrepreneur in situations where they have no business being stubborn. At a certain point if things aren’t working you have to give up.  The alternative is more painful than giving up.

Number two, he had done it in the past.  His team had confidence in him.  They had product-market fit and the company was a well-respected brand.  There was enough “status” around Jobs and around Apple.  Credibility existed in spades.  If you are an early stage entrepreneur, you don’t have that.

Number three, Jobs had surrounded himself with really good people.  They could execute.  It wasn’t a singular moment.  Early stage entrepreneurs don’t have that.  Usually, it’s just one, two or three people.  They might be good people, but there aren’t enough of them to execute on a huge vision when the ship is sinking.

The company Slack is often cited as a company that succeeded tremendously even though the chips were down.  Seemingly, they pulled a rabbit out of a hat. But, they had some cash in the bank and the support of their investors to do it.  Without cash and support, the company fails.  They also were able to iterate and grab some early wins that gave the investors more confidence to stick with them.

I was listening to the No Bull podcast with Ben Horowitz.  He spoke briefly about his experience as a CEO and selling off an asset to survive, then IPO’ing to avoid bankruptcy.  The resources they had were minimal, but they had the right timing.  They made the right moves to survive.  One false step and it would have been over.

There are times to ignore the signs of impending doom.  Soldier through. Create that reality distortion field.  The time to do it is when you have some gas in the tank.  If you try to do it when your tank is out of gas and a couple of tires are flat it’s pretty hard to conjure up a reality distortion field.  Then it’s about finding a way to survive.