In the spirit of making short-term sacrifices for long-term success, I use my class at Harvard Business School as an example. I have kept in touch with a few of my classmates, but mostly I see them every five years at our class reunions.

When I graduated from Harvard Business School in 1984, the people who seemed to know exactly where they were going were the ones who took the “safe” route. They joined investment banks or consulting firms with big salaries or joined large organizations like Sperry Univac and Ford Motor Company. At the five-year reunion, those people who took those relatively safe routes were puffing their chests out with pride at their success. Meanwhile, my classmate Jerry Shafir decided to start a healthy organic soup company, and at the five-year reunion, he was broke. Another friend, Ron Johnson, took a job in retail, where no self-respecting MBA would tread, and at the five-year mark, he was scraping gum off the floors of Target stores. A third classmate, Steve Wiggins, was struggling to start one of the first health maintenance organizations (HMOs). He also was broke. I started the venture capital company and at the five-year reunion, I was $6 million in debt to the US SBIC program, and the people there were calling my loan.

By the ten-year reunion, Jerry, Ron, Steve and I each still had our problems, but the safe bets weren’t looking quite so safe. Sperry Univac was disappearing fast and Ford Motor Company was seeing Japan cut into its market share. Consultants and investment bankers were finding their careers flattening out and were wondering if this was all there was to life.

By the fifteen-year reunion, Jerry was selling a lot of soup. Ron was a leading figure in retail and would go on to create the first Apple Store and run retail for Apple Computer. Steve’s company, Oxford Medical, was worth hundreds of millions of dollars, and my venture capital business was hitting the knee in the curve of what became the technology boom. At the twenty-year reunion, many of the people who took the safe routes were asking the four of us for jobs.

I think it is one of life’s ironies that the people who played it safe ran into trouble, and the people who took big, seemingly reckless chances wound up “safe.” The world changes rapidly. I highly recommend taking the risks of guessing what the future may look like and then pursuing a business that looks like that future. At first, you will look silly, but you will not be at anyone else’s mercy, and over time you might just be considered the wise one. …