The Hard Thing About Hard Things: learn how to solve the worst problems of your business

Presleyson Lima
presleyson
Published in
4 min readDec 6, 2020

The Hard Thing About Hard Things is one of the best books for entrepreneurs in times of crisis.

In it, you learn that what is apparently rock bottom and the bankruptcy of your business is, in fact, an opportunity to see beyond what you are seeing.

Focus, persistence and strategic vision are essential in these moments, after all, they will show you that there is another move to be made, perhaps not so obvious, but that can make all the difference for your survival.

Not cool?

To learn more about the balconies in The Hard Thing About Hard Things, read this text and take advantage of the information!

On The Hard Thing About Hard Things

The Difficult Side of Difficult Situations is a book by Ben Horowitz, a well-known Silicon Valley entrepreneur.

In the example, he tells his entire trajectory in technology companies, including foundation, direction, sale, purchase, management and investment.

Basically, the expert gives a real lesson in entrepreneurship and offers tips and advice to readers in order to help them solve the most complicated problems in their business.

For you to have an idea, your balconies involve from the dismissal of a friend to the ideal time for the sale of a company.

That is, it is very worthwhile to do this reading and take extremely valuable lessons.

The balconies of the book The Hard Thing About Hard Things for entrepreneurs

Among the main insights of the book The Hard Thing About Hard Things are:

1 — Learn from failures

In The Hard Thing About Hard Things, Ben Horowitz says that in 1999 he started a technology company that almost went bankrupt.

Loudcloud, which later became Opsware, emerged amid the crisis of the internet bubble, which at the time involved dot com companies.

Not only did he almost go bankrupt several times, he also had to go through the misfortune of firing several people.

But the most interesting thing is that in view of this complex situation, the author did not allow himself to be overcome.

He learned from failures and used that learning to do better next time, as well as helping other entrepreneurs in his famous book, of course.

What is the difficult situation you are facing?

How about learning from it and reinventing yourself?

Come out better than you came in and not worse. That’s the move!

2 — Trade failure for struggle

Chapter 4 of the book The Hard Thing About Hard Things talks about the struggle, that moment when you realize that everything you thought would happen to your business when you founded it (a wonderful world, full of joys and rivers of money flowing in) it didn’t happen when he was running.

You have no cash, you are full of problems, you do not see a light at the end of the tunnel and on top of that you have to hear family members saying that they do not know why they are still trying something that will not really work.

The author’s tip, in this case, is: don’t see this as failure, but as a struggle.

For him, failure comes only when you let him come, that is, when you definitely give up on your business.

So: be strong and get better on the other side.

3 — Make the next move

For Horowitz, a business does not succeed with few decisions.

There is always a next move, which may not be so obvious and noticeable.

The comparison he makes is with a game of chess in three dimensions.

So when you come across a limit situation, know that there are still more moves to be made.

Think, reflect and be strategic.

The author even says to be careful with feelings like anger, sadness and pity for yourself.

Also, don’t blame external factors like crises, government, etc.

This will only hinder you.

Have focus and security, put your head to think and move on.

The Hard Thing About Hard Things is a great book for entrepreneurs in times of crisis.

Enjoy reading and learning a lot from him!

Book of the Week Tip

If you liked this theme, be sure to read this book available on Amazon The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers (English Edition)

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Presleyson Lima
presleyson

I help entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs get results in their business through information security, talk to me now.