Building an Antifragile Online Business

Issue 002 - Building an Antifragile Online Business

Dear friend,

Welcome back. I appreciate the love and response from last weeks newsletter. If you’re new to the list and didn’t see it you can check it out here.

Today I want to talk about Antifragility in business. These concepts were popularized in the book Antifragile by Nassim Taleb.

Becoming Antifragile: Two parts I want to jam about today

1. Antifragility is achieved by growing through hardships. 

2. Antifragility is achieved by having options.

Let’s start with #1…

Antifragility is achieved by growing through hardships. 

Often we discount trials, tribulation and difficulty. We live in a society that places high value on speed, ease, luxury and the least amount of resistance possible.

Then we don’t realize how fragile when we’re met with the least amount resistance and we lose our minds and / or emotions. We often live at a tipping point of danger.

A mistake I made in business that cause major issues:

 I optimized for ease, convenience and pain-freeness. 

And when that MAJOR resistance came I lost my mind. 😅

I had a couple 8 figure businesses clicking along and I was logging probably about 10-15 hrs a week of work total.

The problem? Weakness and atrophy. Not saying there is anything wrong with working 10, 15, 20 or 5 hours a week. Also, not saying I was weak in every area but important areas.

The problem: lack of resistance.

When you perpetually stay in the place of pressing into resistance you’re building in antifragility. You’re conditioning yourself to thrive IN difficulty.

There is a lot of value in practicing continual discomfort and resistance.

So jumping back to the business fragility… in 2021 when I FELT the fragility and the fractures start to happen I became a mess. I was tired, misaligned on things yea yea but also I had atrophy. I lacked continual resistance. I was fragility. I allowed the business to become fragile.

I was building a “padded room” of ease for myself.

Don’t get me wrong, I love soft pillows, private jets and getaways to Turks and Caicos just as much as the next guy.

However, if that's your mentality and value system there is a good chance it will cause problems for you down the road.

Am I saying you have to cold plunge everyday and do an hour of Wim Hoff? Yes, yes I am. That’s exactly what you should do. No, it’s not. Maybe once a week though? 🥶😜

I’m saying value resistance, discomfort and practice those things on a regular basis.

To think about: What have you been avoiding or what resistance do you need to lean into?

Now that you are mentally and emotionally fortified lets chat about part two of becoming antifragile.

Side note: I’m still working on these things myself. Some days I just want to lay on my soft pillow and binge Netflix with a bowl of ice cream. But i’m making progress.

Antifragility is achieved by having options.

Let’s quickly chat about 4 pillars into building optionality.

1. Cash reserves. At minimum it’s a good idea to have at least 3 months of all expenses but ideally 6. Have cash and/or access to cash i.e. line of credit (I like this backed by real estate). When you have cash-on-hand you have options. Delay gratification to store cash.
   

2. Your necessity. The mistake a lot of “new money” people make is they spend their money, increase their lifestyle and therefore their obligations go up (personally and business). DO NOT SPEND MONEY JUST BECAUSE YOU CAN. Invest invest invest.

    

    Funny side story: I was on a fishing trip in the mountains of NC a couple weeks ago and my buddy and I were talking about this and I casually said “yea man I’d say I was actually pretty frugal aside from the the private jets.” That got a good laugh. 🛩️

So, keep your obligations and therefore your necessity low so that you can be agile and antifragile. Options.

When my big biz was cranking our monthly expenses were 7 figures (a month). 😳 I’d do that differently.

3. Mind your speed. Everybody places a high value on speed. The faster you go the more potential for harm there is. I recently started watching F1 racing. It’s fascinating how fast these guys go but one wrong move and it usually doesn’t end well (potentially, death). Place a high value on a healthy speed. A healthy pace gives you options to make pivots and maneuvers when necessary!
   
   Which brings me to number four…

4. Supply and Demand. I talk about this pretty often in The Collective (my mastermind). You ALWAYS want more demand than you have supply to fulfill.

For example, if you can serve 10 clients well per month you want the demand of 15+ (I can write more on this later).

I just recorded a YouTube video about this. This is a tragedy of a mistake I made: not having multiple Levers of Demand. We were so good at paid that we didn’t “have to” do anything else and we scaled really fast. F1 speed fast.

If I could go back I’d be a lot more intentional on installing more levers of demand:

Here are the 6 to consider:

1. Paid media (other platforms - online and offline)

2. Owned media (put more effort in building community)

3. Earned media

4. Referrals

5. Affiliates

6. Outbound

The more levers of demand you have > the more options you have > the more antifragile you are.

This is what I’m advising ALL my clients consider now (even the solo/agile business owners). It’s nuanced and there are many considerations but I’m testing multiple aspects of these right now.

To think about: What lever do you need to build first or next in your business to create more antifragility?

Daggum - this newsletter is longer than I intended today. There’s a lot more to talk about on this topic but I think this is enough for now, eh?

How’d this hit? Reply back and let me know if it was helpful. Also, what else would you like me to write about?

Until next time,

Chris

ps Interested in installing levers of demand into your business but not sure how or what to focus on? Hit me back and let’s jam about it!