Can you win a game of cups and ball?

One day, if you haven’t already worked it out, you will come to realise that many businesses you see surviving and thriving are largely feeding off the doomed efforts and wasted energy of many who think they are on the path to success.
It’s a big game and many are unaware of their part in it.
Statistically, small businesses fail on a massive ratio compared to those who succeed, but whilst they’re trying to make progress, they are investing in the big businesses who take their money in exchange for goods and services. Yes, I know it’s all perceived as a “you give, we give” game. The tables are often tilted and sometimes the whole platform is skewed.
Remember that time when you realised you needed the latest … let’s take a Blackberry as an example, as that pits the story in the past. Its lead on the competition was unquestionable and the functionality of email on the go, the convenience of constant contact, always being available, were seen as the missing link to small business success. But in reality, no-one wanted to call you and talk business just because you had acquired one, they probably didn’t even know. Research in Motion had your money, you had their product, you were excited at the prospect of realising the benefits and cashing in on the flow of extra business facilitated by the technology; yet nothing actually changed. You can replace the Blackberry with all sorts of other products, and even services like coaching and personal development, smarter premises, a revised website … all bought into with an excitement of elevated expectation, and once acquired you realise little or no change actually occurred.
It’s not that the services and shiny things aren’t good, many are. The problem lies in the unrealistic mindset you need to adopt when convincing yourself that you can afford it, or more often cannot afford not to; even at the risk of buying on credit, safe in the knowledge you’ll earn enough, and more, to pay it all back.
See what happened there? You just became another valued customer of the money-at-interest industry who enabled you to become a customer of the provider, not forgetting the unavoidably essential insurance policy to protect the financial value of your new asset.
On a smaller scale:
You see the hustler at the small pop-up table, three cups and a ball, fast dextrous hands mixing them up, and the sad punter posed and poised to lose their money. You watch the show, even though you know the result is fixed; you know it is, but the spectacle is too good to miss and after all, you know all you need to know to avoid being duped. Then you see a winner, someone who walks away from the table, cash in hand, and in that moment you step forward, ready to play. Emotion overtakes reason, you drop your guard, reach for your pocket and forget the vital role of the stooge in attracting the next victim.
Pan out. See the bigger picture. Imagine this scenario being played out many times all across the economy every day, so much so that when we are given a measure of our economy, it is booming! It’s not all cups and ball, that’s just an illustration. Business is good and getting better, people are buying things, money is moving and the prospects are sunny and warm, verging on a heatwave. Who wouldn’t want to ride the wave?
I empathise with anyone who sees this article as deeply cynical and feels disempowered by its message. If they are thinking and feeling it, chances are they are still reeling from their own personal last example, or are poised to go again having convinced themselves doing the same thing and expecting a different result is indeed insanity, but what they are about to do is not the same. It is, in recently adopted fact, very, very different.
I posed a question in the title. Can you win a game of cups and ball? I don’t know.
I do know that armed with relevant facts and being in control of our emotions can help us to make good decisions about who, where, how and with what we play.
I’m pretty sure many won’t, but their decisions don’t force you into joining in, sometimes it simply depends on how you see the players in the game; do you remember the stooge?
