Conventional wisdom is ruining your startup
June 20, 2021
In this episode, we talk about how most people follow conventional wisdom blindly because they really don't question what's going on.
Is conventional wisdom ruining your startup? So, this is something that I see quite often is a lot of people will just do things the same way, because that's the way that it's always been done. They won't question why they're doing it that way, or if anything changed or if there's like a better way to do something. I'm actually reminded when a family member after cooking, they would leave all the food out to cool before they put it in the fridge. And that made me a little curious because as far as I know the way that bacteria grows on food is, the longer the cooling process, the more bacteria has a chance to grow.
So if you want to stop bacteria from growing, you have to shorten the cooling process and the best way to shorten the cooling process to put your food in the fridge. Well, this kind of went against what my family member believed and my family member was like, no, that's stupid. Like this is how it's always been done. This is how people do it. And I was like, okay well that doesn't make sense to me. Maybe you should go look look look it up and see exactly why people are doing it that way. So the reason that people would do it that way is because our refrigeration technology wasn't as powerful as it was before. So what was happening is if you put hot food into a fridge, that hot plate that you're putting into the fridge doesn't spoil or anything like that, what's happening is that hot plate will raise the temperature in the fridge and it will make all the other food in the fridge spoil. So the conventional wisdom is so if you put the food in the fridge um too early and if it's still hot, then that's how it spoils quickly. But that's not the right way, right? The longer the cooling process, the more time it has for bacteria to grow and that's how it spoils. So that was the thing. The whole thing is the reason why people have been doing it that way is because our refrigeration technology wasn't that great. So if you put a hot plate in the fridge the temperature of the fridge would go down and would spoil the other food. But now because we have fantastic refrigeration technology, we don't need to do that anymore. You can actually put that hot plate directly into the fridge and the rest of your food will be okay and you will minimize the amount of bacteria that will spoil your food. So there's a lot of these different types of conventional wisdoms that people just kind of abide by without thinking. Another one, for example, is in Houston texas. When I was looking at different rental properties that I could buy, I could not find anything that seemed to be profitable on paper. And the way that I calculate profitability is I don't use appreciation, appreciation to me is like icing on the cake, so if your property appreciates and that's just extra money, but I am all about cash flow, right? I'm looking at cash flow, I'm not gonna get into an investment or I'm starting to lose money. And the conventional wisdom says that if you buy a property you will probably do well. And what people have been telling me is like, oh, well there's people buying property every day. So what are, are they just making stupid choices? And Yes, yes, they are, they're making dumb choices. And I'll give you an example of how I actually had a little competition at work when I was working at a trade floor doing their forecasting and in this competition, this is something that, you know, we mentioned in passing because people are interested in investing and stuff like that and I was expressing how I could not find any rental properties that were profitable. And everyone just kind of like looked at me like no, you're stupid. There's obviously Brennan properties out there. So I did this challenge where I said, Okay, I will give anyone $10,000 if they can find me a rental property that's profitable from the beginning, meaning it is going to make cash flow and I'm not just banking on the appreciation. Well, guess how many people want Nobody and people actually try $10,000 is not a bad price. All they have to do is just find me the property so I can go make a deal, but no one was able to do it because you can't do it. The thing about Houston, however, is a lot of people from California have been moving to Houston and these people have a lot of money, so they've been going to Houston buying houses in cash and they're usually over paying for these houses because they're used to paying a lot. So when they see these little mcmansions going for $300,400,000 To them, it was like Oh this is like easily a $1.2 million dollar house and They'll offer $900,000 for it. So if you did buy a house you probably came up because you made a lot of money on the appreciation, but just on a pure rental basis, it was a losing proposition. So there's all this conventional wisdom that's out there that people just follow blindly because they really don't question what's going on. And when you see different technologies coming up, for example, our whole advertising technology, right, We can now advertise to very small niches. This is something that we haven't been able to do before, where if you wanted to advertise to a small niche, it was, it was a losing proposition because you would have to take out a super Bowl commercial to go nationwide, etcetera. So it's very difficult to market to small niches. But now this is a possibility that's open to us because we have technologies such as Facebook ads, google ads, Twitter ads, youtube ads, etcetera. And now we can actually advertise to a very small niche and we can pinpoint a niche with laser point accuracy and be able to develop a market and scale of market out of a small niche just because we have these technologies. So when there's founders out there, they're still chasing investor funds, they're still doing pitch decks. It really does bother me because the world has changed and these founders have not changed with it. This is Robin Copernicus. Boom bam. I'm out.
Continue your journey with me on my other channels:
So if you want to stop bacteria from growing, you have to shorten the cooling process and the best way to shorten the cooling process to put your food in the fridge. Well, this kind of went against what my family member believed and my family member was like, no, that's stupid. Like this is how it's always been done. This is how people do it. And I was like, okay well that doesn't make sense to me. Maybe you should go look look look it up and see exactly why people are doing it that way. So the reason that people would do it that way is because our refrigeration technology wasn't as powerful as it was before. So what was happening is if you put hot food into a fridge, that hot plate that you're putting into the fridge doesn't spoil or anything like that, what's happening is that hot plate will raise the temperature in the fridge and it will make all the other food in the fridge spoil. So the conventional wisdom is so if you put the food in the fridge um too early and if it's still hot, then that's how it spoils quickly. But that's not the right way, right? The longer the cooling process, the more time it has for bacteria to grow and that's how it spoils. So that was the thing. The whole thing is the reason why people have been doing it that way is because our refrigeration technology wasn't that great. So if you put a hot plate in the fridge the temperature of the fridge would go down and would spoil the other food. But now because we have fantastic refrigeration technology, we don't need to do that anymore. You can actually put that hot plate directly into the fridge and the rest of your food will be okay and you will minimize the amount of bacteria that will spoil your food. So there's a lot of these different types of conventional wisdoms that people just kind of abide by without thinking. Another one, for example, is in Houston texas. When I was looking at different rental properties that I could buy, I could not find anything that seemed to be profitable on paper. And the way that I calculate profitability is I don't use appreciation, appreciation to me is like icing on the cake, so if your property appreciates and that's just extra money, but I am all about cash flow, right? I'm looking at cash flow, I'm not gonna get into an investment or I'm starting to lose money. And the conventional wisdom says that if you buy a property you will probably do well. And what people have been telling me is like, oh, well there's people buying property every day. So what are, are they just making stupid choices? And Yes, yes, they are, they're making dumb choices. And I'll give you an example of how I actually had a little competition at work when I was working at a trade floor doing their forecasting and in this competition, this is something that, you know, we mentioned in passing because people are interested in investing and stuff like that and I was expressing how I could not find any rental properties that were profitable. And everyone just kind of like looked at me like no, you're stupid. There's obviously Brennan properties out there. So I did this challenge where I said, Okay, I will give anyone $10,000 if they can find me a rental property that's profitable from the beginning, meaning it is going to make cash flow and I'm not just banking on the appreciation. Well, guess how many people want Nobody and people actually try $10,000 is not a bad price. All they have to do is just find me the property so I can go make a deal, but no one was able to do it because you can't do it. The thing about Houston, however, is a lot of people from California have been moving to Houston and these people have a lot of money, so they've been going to Houston buying houses in cash and they're usually over paying for these houses because they're used to paying a lot. So when they see these little mcmansions going for $300,400,000 To them, it was like Oh this is like easily a $1.2 million dollar house and They'll offer $900,000 for it. So if you did buy a house you probably came up because you made a lot of money on the appreciation, but just on a pure rental basis, it was a losing proposition. So there's all this conventional wisdom that's out there that people just follow blindly because they really don't question what's going on. And when you see different technologies coming up, for example, our whole advertising technology, right, We can now advertise to very small niches. This is something that we haven't been able to do before, where if you wanted to advertise to a small niche, it was, it was a losing proposition because you would have to take out a super Bowl commercial to go nationwide, etcetera. So it's very difficult to market to small niches. But now this is a possibility that's open to us because we have technologies such as Facebook ads, google ads, Twitter ads, youtube ads, etcetera. And now we can actually advertise to a very small niche and we can pinpoint a niche with laser point accuracy and be able to develop a market and scale of market out of a small niche just because we have these technologies. So when there's founders out there, they're still chasing investor funds, they're still doing pitch decks. It really does bother me because the world has changed and these founders have not changed with it. This is Robin Copernicus. Boom bam. I'm out.
Continue your journey with me on my other channels:
Follow Me
Instagram: https://robin.ws/instagram
Facebook: https://robin.ws/fb-page
YouTube: https://robin.ws/youtube
Visionaries Group: https://robin.ws/group
Clubhouse: @rbn - https://robin.ws/clubhouse
Facebook: https://robin.ws/fb-page
YouTube: https://robin.ws/youtube
Visionaries Group: https://robin.ws/group
Clubhouse: @rbn - https://robin.ws/clubhouse
Book: https://mvmbook.com
Book a Call: