5 Guaranteed ways to fail a business or project

Running a successful business is hard, and it won't be much fun. You would need to make a lot of sacrifices professionally and personally. Overnight success takes years of struggling and with no guarantees at the end. I am losing your attention, and it is reading like a textbook. 

Anyway, there are loads of books and blogs written on this topic already (some even by people not full of shit, DM me for my favs). So I thought why not flip the script and write the foolproof guide on how to fail. 

I have seen these methods I will cover applied in big companies and startups. Every time they lead to the same result; significant loss of money, time and generally the creation of some sudo business expert (i get the irony) ready to coach you to success.

Now, no matter where you work, you will be able to get results with these methods each time and every time. How cool is that?  

All these methods need not be applied individually; you can mix as many as you want together. Isn't that fun :) 

Get ready to pump out quantity over quality and jump into these shore fire ways to fail.

1. Don't validate, don't listen to your customers, don't read and don't measure business metrics. 

The perfect approach for people who are always right; we all know at least one of these. 

2. Don't have a vision for what success looks like, and if you do, under no circumstances should you communicate this goal to your team

I call this one the reverse Steve Jobs perfect for people in denial of the lack of success in their lives.

3. Play your team against each other; when things go wrong, it is their fault. 

This option works best when mixed with option one and or two. It can cut the time to inevitable failure in half. 

4. Use as many buzzwords as you can and don't fall into the trap of trying to solve a real problem. 

Likely the number one path to failure for the entrepreneur who early in the business hear time and time again "you have a solution looking for a problem". 

5. Favour the advice of people who agree with you over those more experienced and knowledgeable on a topic.

Especially ignore those with a track record of success if they disagree with you clearly, they just have good luck. You are the new great thing and definitely smarter.

On your road to failure, at some point, you're going to hear the lies you tell yourself and others. All those buzzwords you never really understood, the quote of the day posts on social media might suddenly look pointless. You might even catch yourself out thinking, fake it till you make it, maybe I should start work on this second part. You need to bury these feelings straight away!  Don't worry though, it is going to be an easy task for most of you.

This brief glimpse of honesty about your situation might lead you to want to make a real change and identify a problem which not only could you solve, but people would pay you to do so. Very rarely, I have seen people take this step and go onto build a business. You are probably safe, and still, on your way to failure, success in business is hard, and you're off in your head having delusions of grandeur. Stay strong loser!