A person's belief about themselves can change their outcome and behavior, which in turn can make them smarter or more successful.

Can having a belief that your SaaS company will succeed have a powerful impact on your success? When you're confident, you take action, which increases confidence and leads to a virtuous cycle.

But there might be times when you should challenge your confidence a bit by taking an opposite stance. Look for reasons you might fail, to ensure you're not fooling yourself.

If you have too much confidence that you will succeed, you might not try as hard. Or you might try just hard enough to say "I put in a solid effort. That's got to count for something." As if you were trying to pass a class where the professor would give you a decent grade just for looking like you tried your best.

That works in school, but the business world has its own laws of nature. It's more like a video game: (b)eat or get (b)eaten.

A survey of millionaires suggests that college grades don't correlate with eventual net worth. Those who became wildly successful were not at the top of their class. Most were business owners.

Great Students and Great Entrepreneurs Face Opposite Directions

Students play defensively and entrepreneurs play offensively.

When you're on the offensive, you're proactive and take control of the situation.

At first, you'll make errors left and right. Every attempt ends in disaster. But as you learn the boundaries of the field, you hit your shots. Your social media profile gains followers, you get the core software features working, people show excitement about your product.

Each small win is a confidence booster, spurring you to make even more attempts. Before you know it, you're a master. Or a billionaire. Or both.

Being a brilliant student, at least in traditional schools, requires a defensive mindset. When you're in defense mode, you react to your competitor. They call the shots.

Your teacher dictates the curriculum, sets the passing grade, and you have to dodge the F they throw at you in the form of boring textbooks and subjects you don't care about.

You'd rather be programming, playing video games, and watching hard science fiction movies, but nope. Gotta study microeconomics and linear algebra.

The student who best delivers what the teachers want rises to the top.

In business, people and businesses are the "teachers", but they don't clearly state what they want. Moreover, what they want changes every day.

They may give general guidelines, like "Lower prices! Better selection! Faster shipping!" but that's like the teacher walking in on the first day of school and saying "Give me a 4.0!", then leaving until finals. Good luck.

In the business world, no teacher will magically appear and tell you which problem to solve and where to look for answers. To succeed, you must set your own curriculum, decide your own passing and perfect grade, and choose the textbooks and class materials.

Instead of following the rules, you need to ask, "What is everyone doing?" and do the opposite. Otherwise, you blend in with all the rest.

"Make yourself a magnet of attention by appearing larger, more colorful, more mysterious than the bland and timid masses."—Robert Greene, The 48 Laws of Power (Law 6)

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