Santiago Bilinkis l Risk and Reward - Trying to live a life out of the comfort zone

Along the lines of comparing the learnings from paragliding with becoming an Entrepreneur, the first post covered the stage of preparation. Now is the time to focus on the start-up phase. And as Wes Harman, the author of this photo, graciously reminds us, no start-up is ever the first or last to die!

So back to Tucuman and my paragliding course. After two hours of suffering and being blown by the wind on the flat, the instructor said it was time to move on to the next stage: the first take off. We moved to a different location, where we could walk up a hill about 100 feet high. Naive, I asked: “We are going to fly in tandem, right?”. The professor laughed. With only two hours of practice, it was time for my first flight alone.

I was not so sure about doing it. So I let two braver friends try it first. They took off, but barely reached an altitude of 6 feet and landed very nearly. So I thought: “I can do that!”. I took a deep breath and took off.

My take off was different from that of my friends. I don’t know what I did, but I flew much higher and landed a lot further away, at the end of the valley down the hill. Everything was perfect, just as the instructor said it would be.

There I learned the big lesson of that first flight. All the instability the paraglider had while on the ground disappeared immediately after I started flying. It is our body’s weight, hanging from the wing, that gives it stability and lift.

Now let’s see what we can conclude regarding the start-up phase of a project.

1) Having prepared is essential: Preparation is important per se, but it is also key for later stages. Even if no planning can anticipate everything that is going to happen, in early stages in which tenths of decisions have to be made in a short span it is much better if you did what the previous post detailed. Frustrating as it was, I would have never had the nerve to take off if it wasn’t for the two hours I spent on the flat.

2) Preparation is essential, but many times makes things look harder than they are: The biggest risk of preparation is to make things look more complex than they are. The goal is to reduce uncertainty and help us take risks, but sometimes it works out exactly the opposite. For that reason, we should not take preparation beyond a certain point. Reality is simpler that we think it.

3) Doesn’t matter how much you prepared, at some point you have to breathe deeply and jump: Even if we try to minimize the objective and subjective risks, there is no way around getting to a point where we have to close our eyes for a second, then move forward. That instant in which we are still on the ground, but we make the decision to go airborne.

4) When lacking a standing point, you are the source of support: When your feet are off the ground, there is no more standing point. But that does not mean you are adrift. Interestingly, what makes the paraglider stable is the weight of your own body. And the only source of stability when starting up is also yourself!

5) Success or failure, from the very first minute, depends on execution: Doesn’t matter how good your paraglider (idea) is or how long you prepared. The cards are dealt with the decisions and actions you take once you take off. At the beginning, like a rookie driver, you have to think about every detail. Then, later on, details are internalized and you can focus on what is important..

In the next post, we will focus on the most interesting and important part of flying and being an entrepreneur: the flight itself.

Photo: Wes Harman