I like the chaos theory since it was the main part of my studies. Chaos theory is explained in common words as the butterfly effect. In a few words it means that a small change in the initial conditions of a problem can cause large scale changes over time.

What does this mean to business success?

Well, I have been watching several extremely successful entrepreneurs and what I found out so far is that many of them went from good to great because of a tiny change in their life. Moreover, this change might not even had to do with business itself. They met someone special, they were at the right place in the right time but almost all do not credit their success to day-to-day business activities. These are to maintain a successful business.

Personally, in my life, success always came from non business related factors. I can recall meeting someone during holidays at a place where I wouldn’t have been anyway and then doing business together, or even finding the right person in very unusual circumstances. On the other hand, I met my girlfriend after searching for a house for my parents. In all these situations I wasn’t searching for what I actually found, but the result was a success.

My point is that life is very strange and unpredictable. You should not expect great success from a well known path. Of course you should not expect either strange things to happen in your life in order to have great success. What you can do is to always be ready to identify what is going on every moment in your life and how that might help you succeed in any factor. If you are totally busy executing your plan without being able to identify the opportunities around you then you will loose the game. You will be successful but you will not enjoy great success.