How To Fail In Business?

More than once, I heard Charlie Munger - Warren Buffett's longtime partner at Berkshire Hathaway - quip:

"All I want to know is where I'm going to die, so I'll never go there."

That was his humorous shorthand for inversion thinking - a problem-solving method borrowed from mathematics and physics, where the goal is to reason backward to uncover what causes something to succeed (or fail).

Munger tied this idea to a line most often attributed to Carl Menger (1840–1921), the Austrian economist, who famously said:

"Invert, always invert."

I've tried this approach myself in my pursuit of business success. Instead of asking, "How can I succeed in business?" I ask a different question:

"How could I guarantee failure?"

That single inversion immediately begs the next question: How do I avoid doing those things?

The right path forward is not always obvious - but the wrong paths usually are. Rather than attempting impressive feats of intellectual foresight, I've found it more effective to itemize what NOT to do, with the understanding that my default path then leads only to non-failure - otherwise known as success.

The logic is simple: by systematically identifying the ways to fail, we expose blind spots, challenge fragile assumptions, and de-risk situations where the downside is heavy and the upside is uncertain or dependent on luck.

This type of thinking came to me early in life - born out of the tragedy of my father's premature death from a heart attack at age 41.

At nine years old, it was initially enough to accept the explanation that "God works in mysterious ways." That was the standard consolation offered by the elders in my life - and it may or may not be true.

But either I rejected the idea that we are merely playthings dancing on the strings of an unseen power, or I trusted my own intuition more.

I came to believe that my father's early death was the result of choices: chain-smoking, a terrible diet, daily alcohol consumption, lack of exercise, high stress, and a knee-jerk temper.

I remember telling myself:

"Paul - here's how to die young. Do what Dad did."

I didn't realize it at the time, but I was already inverting.

When someone would say, "If it's meant to be, it will be," I would smirk. That kind of thinking struck me as an excuse - a way to avoid taking the driver's seat in one's own life.

Once you accept that you have agency in producing outcomes, it becomes painfully obvious when others refuse to exercise it and instead blame fate.

Invert. Don't ask, "How do I live a long, healthy life?" Ask instead:

"How do I dramatically increase my odds of sickness and early death?"

The obvious answers come flooding in:

• Smoke like a chimney
• Use drugs that dull your thinking and motivation
• Drink the weekends away
• Overeat
• Eat poorly
• Sit endlessly watching television or playing video games

Accept your agency - and invert.

When the lottery slogan says, "You can't win if you don't play," simply invert it:

"You can't lose if you don't play."

Since the odds are heavily stacked against you anyway, I take quiet satisfaction in knowing that I've never spent a dollar on a lottery ticket. I didn't lose - because I didn't play.

So how does this apply to business?

Instead of asking, "How do I succeed in business?" ask:

"How do I avoid the missteps that cause businesses to fail?"

Voilà.

Once you reframe the question, the mind fills effortlessly with failure modes:

How does one succeed in business? Easy - you succeed by NOT failing. All the best!

---

Do you like our philosophical approach to business? Drop us a line. We look forward to working with like-minded people and companies.