I would not be who I am today if I had listened to what people have preached to be the "right thing".
When I was 15, my mom caned me for using the computer all day. I would run home right after school so I could play Diablo 2. My parents would lock the door, hide the mouse, not pay the internet bill because apparently, I was addicted to the computer. Little did they know that I was learning how to "hack" the game, which inevitably led to me learning to code.
I didn't listen to my mother. I learned to jam the door's lock, bought my mouse, figured out how to make money on the internet so I can pay for the internet bills by myself. Today, I own an internet business and am in one of the hottest industries.
When I was 24, the Media Authority of Singapore (MDA) blocked porn. That very weekend, very much inspired by the lack of porn; I sought out my girlfriend's opinion on whether I should build and release a VPN product that will allow people to bypass MDA's firewall. I was worried that I would get into legal trouble for circumventing the state government's firewall.
Gom VPN (which was a typo from GAM which meant Go away MDA) ended up going viral and became my very first profitable product.
Yesterday, I wrote a controversial story about how I got fucked over, and I spared no details. The right thing to do is to not air my dirty laundry in public, let alone with such intimate details.
My post had 1500+ views today. Not bad for my 6th blog post that was done in the name of marketing.
You can never please everyone. Risk aversion will doom you to a life of mediocrity. Every successful outcome I had in life was a result of a non-conventional bet. So take a swing, offend people, do something controversial. It is liberating and many a times, much more rewarding.