Entrepreneurship Doesn't Make Sense

One of the books I’m re-reading at the minute is Peter Thiel’s ‘Zero to One’ (I’d forgot just how good it actually is)

There was one quote that really struck me from the book;

‘The paradox of teaching entrepreneurship is that a formula for success can’t exist’

This sounds obvious on the face of it, but then if we think about how often we look for set systems, frameworks, ways of doing things

We realise that most people have an assumption (maybe based on reading the convincing marketing of mentors and coaches)

‘There’s a set way of doing things and if I just follow the steps then success is inevitable’

I can see why this is attractive, I posted yesterday about how the brain loves certainty - which is why a lot of copy offers that.

One distinction that Thiel makes is between horizontal progress, and vertical progress

Horiztonal progress is ‘1 to n’ - taking something that already works and doing more. He points to how China has basically been copying from the US and Western world for 40 years in this way.

Easy to do, because the template exists - the risk is low, but there’s limited upside because once enough people do it then there’s no margin

Vertical progress is 0 to 1 - Doing something genuinely new. Vertical progress is essential for technology (technology isn’t just computers, it’s any new way of doing thing.)

For me, there isn’t enough vertical progress in the fitness industry. Which means we can’t teach ‘entrepreneurship’, as the businesses are mostly copying each other.

Don’t get me wrong - coaching is coaching, fitness is fitness - it’s not easy to reinvent the wheel. But even in the small areas - how we market a fitness company, or how we deliver the product, what it looks like.

I think the health and fitness industry is largely stagnant, with people churning out replicas of what’s already been done and maybe making incremental changes to it

What we need is more people trying to reinvent the category - I think fitness needs an Uber, Airbnb or SpaceX.

Don’t ask me what that looks like, as I don’t know - which is the point!