I was on Donny Deutsch’s Big Idea on Tuesday. Check out the archive page for a snippet.
The show focused on how to deal with and evaluate risk. After spending an hour talking to Donny as well as guests such as the co-founders of Paul Mitchell systems and Fubu, I took away one key idea about making a high risk decision about an opportunity:
Own the deadline. Set the deadline for your decision based on your desire, ability to get all the information together and the time based limits in the opportunity. Research the heck out of the time based limits of the opportunity, as presented to you. Often they are not true, and intended to scare you into saying yes. When they are true, you might have a chance to seize the moment and take advantage of a lucrative situation.
Here’s the key. You can’t let the opportunity tell you when to decide. You have to take the above three factors into account and tell yourself when you’ll decide go/no-go.
Otherwise, it’s a one sided game where your fear (or greed) may kill your objectivity and produce a terrible decision.
