Most Successful Businesses Look the Same. Most Failures Don't.

In the beginning of his book “Anna Karenina”, Tolstoy wrote “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

And that opening line was used in “Guns, Germs, and Steel”, by its author Jared Diamond, to explain why some species were domesticated and why some were not and mostly remain undomesticated.

A domesticable animal needs to meet a specific set of criteria, all simultaneously. The species needs to be willing to breed in captivity, have a manageable disposition, eat a diet humans can provide, grow at a useful rate, not panic under threat, and accept a social hierarchy that includes humans.

Some examples:

First up, the zebra.

Looks like a funny-colored horse. Why are we not seeing people in Palo Alto and Woodside getting dressage lessons on zebras? They’re physically similar to a horse in many respects, but they have an aggressive disposition and an unpredictable bite that makes the whole situation essentially unworkable. They check nearly every box but fail one and so we’re left with boring brown, black, and white horses.

The grizzly bear fails on disposition. The cheetah can be tamed but won't breed in captivity. The elk is too skittish. Each one fails for its own specific reason. So the failures all look unique, but success looks the same.

As in nature, so too in business.

I won’t be so bold as to claim that ALL successful businesses look the same, or meet all of the same criteria, because if we’ve learned anything from the internet it’s that there’s always someone who will make it their life’s work to disprove statements like that with the one exception in existence.

But suffice it to say that most successful businesses meet a shared set of criteria, and if viewed through that lens … the various failures and missteps seem less unique and more predictable.

And not just your business at large, but individual aspects of your business.

Take your ideal client profile.

You have a set of criteria for who this ideal person is. They have the problem you solve, they are ready to have help solving it, they’re willing and able to pay, they have the authority to actually say yes and move things forward … but they treat you or your team poorly. Looks like a horse, talks like a horse, is actually a zebra.

Success looks the same because it meets all those specific criteria.

Failure could look like any one or any combination of them not working out.

Looks and feels unique at first glance, but all that happened is you didn’t check all the boxes.

Now I’m not saying you should read Tolstoy for the blueprint of a perfect business. Some of you might still want to. But if you start paying attention to the wins AND the losses, you might pick up on the criteria that spell success … which will ultimately save you the time spent trying to domesticate zebras, grizzly bears, and cheetahs.

This week, think about the last client, hire, or partnership that didn't work out. Which box didn't get checked? Chances are the failure wasn't unique.

Let me know what you think happened, and what you think good looks like.