A Business Law Attorney Can Be The Antidote To Your Entrepreneurial Exuberance

The best business partner is someone whose thought processes line up closely with yours.  “Opposites attract” does not usually apply to business partnerships; to borrow an idea from an old Freakonomics podcast, Bert and Ernie might get along well as friends and roommates, but if they embarked on a business venture together, not only would it be likely to ruin their friendship, but it would probably end in litigation.  The ideal brainstorm buddy with whom you share at least one meal per day is not someone who is always playing devil’s advocate or taking the mickey out of you.  While taking the mickey arguably has no place in professional life, you do need someone to give you a reality check about your brilliant ideas before you get too carried away with them.  The best person to do that is a lawyer with whom your company has an ongoing professional relationship.  A Washington DC small business law attorney can talk you down from risky business decisions before you commit funds to them.

Are Entrepreneurs Hard-Wired to Believe That They Can’t Lose?

This fall, a study by Daniel Walters and Philip Fernbach appears in the newest issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The study documents overconfident investing behavior by stock market investors and suggests ways to temper it.  The study asked people who had made numerous investments in the stock market to describe the performance of their investments.  They tended to remember their successful investments as being more successful than they were.  As for previous losses, they tended to remember them as less severe than they were, if they even remembered them at all.  When asked to review documentation of previous investments before making a new investment, their investing choices became less risky.

The study did not address whether the epidemic of hubris among investors was a matter of nature or nurture, but it did show that the investors could benefit from a reality check before making a major investment decision.  Perhaps this finding is generalizable beyond stock market investing to other kinds of business investments.  The entrepreneurial culture tends to encourage boundless confidence, or the illusion of it.  Entrepreneurs are socialized, by their peers and by self-help books, to think that they can’t lose or at least to pretend that they think that.  No matter how great your business idea is, and no matter how charismatic you are, there is no guarantee of a return on investment.  Someone needs to remind you that you can lose, and the best person to do that is a lawyer who has their facts straight about your professional history and who has always given you sound advice.

Contact Us Today for Help

You continue being the charismatic entrepreneur you have always been, and let your lawyer be the voice of reason.  A business law attorney can help you see all possible outcomes of an investment before any money changes hands.  Contact Tobin O’Connor Concino P.C. for help today.

Resource:

arstechnica.com/science/2021/09/investor-overconfidence-linked-to-selective-memory/