Base Rates and Why Motivational Speakers Suck

What do the reasons why most New Year’s resolutions, the overwhelming majority of new businesses, and people learning a new instrument all fail have in common?

A lack of respect for base rates.

For example, a proven base rate is that 80% of new restaurants will fail before two years. That’s undeniable fact. You can either ignore that based out of steadfast belief in yourself, or you can heed it’s warning and plan accordingly. Knowing and respecting that base rate that I have a 20% chance of success, I would set out to talk to someone with experience in that field. I would choose to seek out confirming information (someone who has succeeded) and disconfirming information (someone who has not), so that my plan is based out of balanced rationale and not filtered and totally misguided excitement. I would ask questions that ensured I wasn’t skewing my own excitement to give me the answers that I wanted.

How many hours a day did you work? What were your unexpected costs? Did this have a positive or negative effect on your family life? What was your income after five years? Why did your employees leave? At what point did you decide to close doors? When did you know that your restaurant was going to be successful?

Base rates and talking to those with experience re-calibrate our blind, baseless faith in ourselves and allow a realistic viewpoint of where we can head, ultimately netting success into a four part process.

1. Assess your goal with your own views (strengths and weaknesses).
2. Assess your goal with facts (base rates).
3. Assess your goal with outside views (those who have succeeded and failed).
4. Establish a game plan (aggregating the data). 

Ignoring base rates and those who have gone before you, simply put, is chosen ignorance. There’s a reason the overwhelming majority of people leave Motivational Speaker Guy talk like this: excited, full of self worth, zero sense of plan or execution. Check in with 99% of them six months later and they’re doing the same old shit. A baseless proclamation of , “You can do this!” is appealing to low hanging emotional fruit and urges unprepared people to embark without appropriate knowledge.

Sensible and methodical assessment of your approach with data and inquisition is your most realistic outcome for success in any pursuit.

Know and understand your base rates.

-Dave