“Don’t Worry Be Crappy” Ship It Anyway

Photo by Guy Kawasaki

Have you ever shipped a new blog, software version, music track, speech, design, (your art) knowing it wasn’t perfect and you sent it anyway?

Like you, I am an artist, an innovator constantly fielding new ideas and rumblings.

That means there is always another idea waiting for me after I ship this one.

Let’s explore why shipping early and repairing later is actually better than waiting for perfection.

Real Artists Ship.
Steve Jobs

Fellow heretic Guy Kawasaki

Formerly Guy was the chief evangelist of Apple.  I am very partial to one of his first books, Rules for Revolutionaries -The Capitalist Manifesto.

In this twelve year old book Guy lays out nine rules for revolutionaries to follow.  (See all 9 here).

Don’t Worry Be Crappy.

Yep, that is what Guy said.  And you should too.

I’ve spent the past seven years in the software world.  Software is never perfect.  As a result you have to determine the impact of the imperfections.

Sometimes you hold back and conclude that would be a mess.  Other times you hit the publish, upload, send, compile button and hope you are right.

You never will know if you were brilliant or foolish until it’s out the door.

Will your customers, prospects, colleagues, friends, followers share the same belief that your defect was only “minor”?  Or will they berate you for your lack of professionalism and excellence?

Michael Hyatt has a great post on this topic related to his blog writing and readers finding mistakes.  Also check out a second post from Michael about Embracing Permanent Beta.

Alpha is worse than you think.

Each time I ship a new version of Alpha software I learn a lot more when it is in the field.  The benefit is that you receive the direct benefit of quickly finding out what is flawed.

The Market Will Tell You.

Shipping early means you gain the benefit of your market, customers, followers, tribe, telling you what you’ve done wrong.

I believe it is better to ship 75% of the right solution to the market than waiting until you have 90% and you are late.

You will never be able to address all of the market needs from inside the walls of your company.

Microsoft has mastered this art of Don’t worry be crappy.

Every second Tuesday of the month they ship us a new Windows update, they know the market will instruct them on what’s crappy.

It’s crappy, now fix it.

Guy’s Rule # 2 is Churn Baby Churn.  Once you ship then you hear what is broken, the clock begins ticking.

Fix it fast.  Equally important is communicating with your customers, tribe, prospects or followers.

Straight from Guy 
Churn, baby, churn. I’m saying it’s okay to ship crap–I’m not saying that it’s okay to stay crappy. A company must improve version 1.0 and create version 1.1, 1.2, … 2.0. ….. Innovation is not an event. It’s a process.

Being Nimble is your advantage.

I have a friend whose son is a Marine.  He was explaining to me about how in battle, the commander is always making decisions with 70% of the available information.

The battle happens too fast to have 100% clarity on what is occurring on the actual battlefield.

The ability to have real-time course correction is the safety net to not knowing if your decision is correct.

The difference between us and Microsoft is that we have the opportunity to revise quickly.

Their big organization moves slow.  It is hard to turn around or quickly change course .  Not us, we are nimble.  

With a phone call, a bug fix delivered to the Cloud, an Elance job, email, Asana task to our virtual assistant-DONE.

Mean What you Say.

The promise that you extended to your customers or your tribe I’m reliable. We care.  You can call the CEO with a problem.  

All of those previous statements now are tested.  What will you do?  Do you care?  Will you fix it?  Do you have an answer at all?

Mr. Customer, I know this looks crappy.  And it is.  It is worse than we thought and we’ve got a team on it.  We will call you each day or email you with a close of business summary of our progress and findings.  Here is my personal cell phone you can call if you ever want an update.  I may not know the answer but I can find it.  

How fast you revise is critical to your survival and integrity in the market.

And if you can’t fix it, say so.

Art I’ve shipped that I knew was crappy

  1. This new website had some rough edges.
    I knew the comment section had some issues.  Yet I knew the overall design and feel was a massive improvement from V1.0.
  2. PriceAdvantage V1.0 gasoline pricing software Spring of 2005.
    This thing was riddled with problems.   One time all of the prices at the pump went to Zero $…..yes Zero $….FREE GAS.  And the store manager called our help desk to ask if she Should I refund the money of the guy who pre-paid $20 cash.  

Now it is your turn to tell your story.    

What project, product, Art have you shipped that you knew was crappy?

And what happened?

Would you do it over again?

Louis Zamperini and how our future resides in our daily thinking

zamperini-louis-skateboarding-4
Louis Zamperini-WWII POW survivor

Our mind holds power for our future.

In our daily thinking reside our success, adventure, happiness, peace, innovation, and hope.

In tandem, our mind can perceive or conceive of loneliness, anger, boredom, apathy and victimization.

Louis Zamperini -age 96, WWII Prisoner of War survivor is an example to be studied.

His story is being featured in an upcoming movie Unbroken.

We must own what occurs within our thinking.  

Successful fruit-producing people in Life, Work, and Relationships own the responsibility of their conclusions, actions, and interpretations.

Whether we were born wealthy and were cared for by nannies or poor and ate free lunch at school.

We all have an equal beginning in the battle for our mind, our beliefs, and understandings.

Even if we are justified, we can still choose life.

Unbroken’s Louis Zamperini learned to skateboard at age 72.

Lou is a World War II prisoner-of-war survivor.

In Unbroken, Laura Hillenbrand describes the unthinkable, unconscionable atrocities done to Lou while in captivity.

By any account he would be justified to be a bitter and cold old man.

And who could have blamed him?

Yet in spite of the pardon for bitterness we would be willing to grant him, he is instead full of joy and hope (age 96 today).

Some people choose to carve out an alternative interpretation of their present challenge.

Some people choose to wallow in their plight.

Each of us have a story that should be told and listened to.

It may be a story of business success or failure.

Maybe it is a story of relational redemption or unraveling.

I have learned that I must not allow my interpretation of my stories to hold me captive.

Here are a couple categories to consider reshaping our thinking

  1. A boss that is impossible
    Release him/her to be miserable, but don’t join them. Spending our lives being miserable because someone makes us so is no way to live. I’ve found in difficult relationships like a boss that it is better to reshape my thinking. Acknowledge that they are actually the one who is miserable. I choose not to be a victim and release them from the responsibility of making me “happy”.
  2. Financial hardship
    The biggest mental enemy of this category is the phrase “I deserve it”.  Who enjoys being broke?  No one?  Personally, I’ve had little and I’ve had much.  I love what Dave Ramsey says about this, “If you want to be rich, hang out with rich people.” His point is do what successful people do.
    My experience shows that without a plan nothing will change. Most plans force us to do things we really don’t initially want to do. We have to conclude that our current financial pain is greater than the behavior that needs to change. Once we reach that conclusion in our mind, we’ve got a shot for our circumstances to improve.
  3. Health & Fitness
    I meet a lot of people who “wish they had time to exercise.” I know that seems true. Usually, the greater reality is we simply choose other things instead of exercise. And that is o.k. if we own the fact that we would rather watch a movie or work too much or volunteer with our free time. Either way, once we make up our mind that we are tired of being tired or weary of our aches and pains, change will come. I’ve found that even fifteen minutes of something is monumentally better than nothing.
    (Feel free to email me and ask me more about this theory-15 Min).

Like Lou Zamperini, we have a choice about how we interpret our life.

Most of which is up to us.

What interpretations and conclusions can you choose today?  

What Will Your Dent in the World Be?

I turned 40 a few months back.

We lost a child eighteen months ago.

And the clock keeps ticking.

I just read about the shooting in Aurora, CO 60 miles up the road from us.

For some the world stopped.  For the rest of us it keeps turning.

What will our dent be?

How will we change the world that we live in that is noticeable after we are gone?

We know we don’t have forever.

And we should leave the world with a noticeable dent that can be attributed to our life.

What part of the world, our community, our school systems, our companies, our businesses will be changed for good because of our place in the story?

Live on purpose.  Start today.

  1. Leave no good thing left unsaid
    It is easy to say bad things, complain, point out shortcomings.  It is much more difficult to say good things.  What good thing are you leaving unsaid?  What phone call should you make?  What letter should you write?  Recently I’ve told my wife how thankful I am that she loves me in spite of my many flaws.
  2. Turn off the TV and create something instead
    Have you ever made something with your kids?  Don’t know where to start?  How about the Dangerous Book for Boys/Girls?  How about that hand-made canoe you’ve dreamed about making since Scout camp when you were 12 years old?
  3. Write down your inner thoughts
    That voice that you hear inside, those ideas and dreams, write them down.  Don’t let them drift away into yesterday’s list of “I should have”.  Translate those inner workings into pen and paper.  Then revisit them.  Befriend them.  Challenge them.  Dare to live them out.
  4. Get in the Game
    Teddy Roosevelt said, “the credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena….”  Get in the game.  What game are you watching as a spectator that you know you should be playing instead?
  5. Stop waiting for permission
    No one is going to give you permission or an invitation to say “Hey that great thing you’ve been contemplating, you should go ahead and start it”.  We all wish that call would come, but for most it does not.  You have all of the permission that you need.  Get going.

What part of the world are you going to change today?

Key Strategies to Define Your Social Media Story

How do you determine which story you want to tell?   

On which channel(s)?  To which audience(s)?  

I’ve found if you ask ten people, you will receive ten different answers.

Here are the key questions that I started with and continue to revisit.

  1. Where do I want to tell my professional Story?  Personal Story?
  2. Do I have distinct boundaries delineating each Social channel?
  3. Do I combine them into a soup and they all intersect with each other?

What are you trying to accomplish using Social Media?

When I first started engaging with Social Media it was a result of peer pressure from a good friend @JonDale.  In his words this is the way the world works, get on-board or be left behind.

Am I trying to communicate strictly for fun with some friends about where I ate and what movie I liked?

Or am I trying to communicate thought provoking ideas and solutions to business problems?

Today, I have settled on a combination of both.

The pendulum of my Social Voice has settled toward thoughtful business ideas and innovations with a dash of personal interactions.

Which channels are reserved for different conversations?

Facebook-Personal

This channel for me remains predominately reserved for personal interactions with people I know.  If it were not for Facebook I would not be connected to people from High School, College and previous eras of life.

I never got involved in Multi-Level Marketing because I wanted my friends to be my friends and not my prospects.  I do include an occasional Blog post but generally I stick to personal topics.

Intersection of Professional & Personal

I am very aware of my professional relationships encountering my Facebook presence.  Therefore I generally don’t venture into any deeply personal topics in the open forum.

LinkedIn-Professional

In the same manner that I have chosen to keep Facebook for predominately personal interactions, LinkedIn is reserved for my professional relationships.  When I hear a speaker at a conference, previous co-workers or a new prospective customer, this is a great channel to maintain those connections.

I choose to add status updates related to professional topics: new customer’s we acquired, new job openings we have and some peppering of Blog posts added.

Primarily I have grown to rely on this channel as a professional rolodex.  It has become less about what we talk about and more about who I know and want to get to know.

Blog-HomeBase

This is my “HomeBase” as @MichaelHyatt calls it in his book Platform.  I control the interactions, the topics, the branding and the discussion.  The commitment level of up keeping this channel is much greater than on any of the other Social channels.

The beauty of this channel is the clarity of message you can control.  And yet if no one reads it then your level of influence is zero.

I have found that regardless of the perceived value of your content this channel must be marketed.

At the end of the day my goal is to create a level of influence in the Social dialogue about topics of building your own brand, entrepreneurship, getting started, and pursuing your inner Art.

For many this channel may start out being your smallest in terms of reach.  However, this channel is made up of allies.

This is your Tribe.  These are your people.  You think alike.  You talk alike.  You learn from each other.

Getting wrapped up in the numbers is less important than being regularly engaged.

Twitter-broadcast channel

Early on I was misinformed about my beliefs about Twitter.  I thought it was simply another tool for someone to show pictures of their cat in dress up clothes.  Yeah, I know…..who does that?

I spent over ten years in the broadcast media industry.  Today, I see Twitter like owning your own TV/Radio station.  Just like viewership or listeners, they are accumulated over years of curating quality content and connections.

My recent sentiment is to reject the “you follow me, I’ll follow you” nicety.  It seems like a willful resignation to receive spam on topics that you would never subscribe to.

Over time, you and I can become micro-brands broadcasting specialized content to engaged tribe members.

The best answer I received on this question was from @Webtherapist.  I am happy to share her insights.  Just ask.

How have you segmented your Social Voice?  I’d love to hear your story here.

How engaged is your team?

Gallup Study: Engaged Employees Inspire Company Innovation

Asking yourself this question is very enlightening.

Here is a quick back of the napkin assessment:

A Not-Engaged Team might look like:

  • If you stood in the exit doorway at 5:00 pm would you be run over by the stampede of people leaving?
  • Do you hear people say “I don’t know anything about that you’ll have to ask someone else?”
  • Does your team bring new ideas to meetings or simply criticize other ideas and how they will “never work“?
  • Do you hear phrases in your office like
    • “Thank God it’s Friday.”
    • “Try not to work too hard.”
    • “It’s a Monday.”

An Engaged Team might look like:

  • Everyone needs a set of keys because they come in early, stay late and work weekends.
  • You have to order laptops for everyone because a desktop workstation would not allow them to create and invent while sitting up in bed watching the news.
  • Your customer’s ask for people by name.
  • Your competitors call to see if you have any job openings.

What is this costing us?
If 100% of your payroll was “Engaged” what could you accomplish?

-80% Engaged/20% Not-Engaged what is the effect?
-50% Engaged/50% Not-Engaged?

Can the momentum be shifted? 
Start with a one-on-one conversation and ask the question “Are you happy?”  You will be surprised what you may hear.  Often times once we can vent and be heard, our disagreements and misunderstandings can fade away.

Let them off the bus
Sometimes you simply need to let them off the bus at the next stop.  Don’t delay.  You’ll sleep better and your engaged teammates will thank you.

*Source-Gallup Business Journal for employee study.

Are You Willing to Put in “Junk Miles”?

Have you ever stopped to plot where you are on the continuum of the Law of 10,000 Hours?

Where are you in time, experience and performance? Are you at the beginning?  Are you in the middle or are you approaching arrival?

Are we willing to put in the “Junk Miles” to get there?

I have considered three categories of my professional craft and sized them up against this idea:

  • Sales and Marketing
  • Leadership
  • Writing

Sales and Marketing:  Arrived @10,000 hrs

I can say with confidence that I know what I have to offer and how rare it is.  I have almost two decades worth of experience including both the mistakes I’ve made and successes I’ve earned.

Leadership:  Half Way @5,000 hrs

Leading people in a formal workplace environment is still new to me.  I love being on the front of the boat steering the ship.  And I rely heavily on others around me to make sure I don’t steer it into a sand bar.  I have just enough to claim that I am not a novice but I am no master either.  More hours are needed.

Writing:  Just Beginning @200 hrs

Although I have been writing privately for years, writing in public is much different.  You have to take into consideration things like voice, tone, audience interest, and theme.  You receive feedback and comments and conversations at dinner parties about it.  I am putting in the miles and I am accepting that I have years ahead of me.

Plotting your place

Whether the 10,000 hour mark is mathematically exact or not is not important to me.  What is important is the principle that there are no shortcuts to mastery.

You have to put in the time and log the hours.

We have to embrace the premise that practice is required.

Tim Ferriss would disagree with the idea that it takes time to become an expert.  In his book The 4-Hour Workweek, a lot of which I love, he details how he had discovered methods and peripheral rules or inside tracks to success.  

In 1999, he became national champion in Chinese Kickboxing.  He found that he could win by shoving his opponents outside of the ring.

He won because he found a technical method to win by.

For me, I am not interested in achievement or success by way of technicality.

I’d rather be a genuine artist, writer, athlete, craftsman, sales and marketing guru.

Putting in “Junk Miles”

In running there is a term they use for logging foundational miles during a training program “Junk Miles”.  Although a depressing category name, they are fundamentally important when training for long distance running events e.g. Marathon (26.2 miles).

These miles are done at slower paces and are aimed at helping an athlete build up his aerobic endurance.  Mile after mile your body learns to perform, to process nutrition and your mental toughness increases as well.

If you attempt to skip these miles you will decrease your overall time on your feet.  In turn you will decrease your chances of meeting your goal or even finishing.

Our crafts require “junk miles” as well.

Unless we are looking for the loophole to success, logging hours, days, weeks, months and years helps us flush out our mistakes and misjudgment.

Mile after mile, as we do the work, refine our approach, learning from our errors, we become like a seasoned athlete ready to take on a race.

I meet a lot of people who want to become runners.  I meet very few people who want to put in the miles in order to become a runner.

 

What area of your life have you achieved reaching the 10,000 hour mark?

Take More Time Explaining Your Art

Art- Photo by Benkay Creative Commons

Take your time assessing what you created.

Take your time explaining the beauty of your art, so we can absorb the magnitude of your creation.

Your photograph, your book, your painting, your company, the album you just finished, the car you restored, or the software release you just finished.

Don’t just move on to the next project.

Think about how long it took you (or short), how many obstacles you faced, and the crux decisions that you had to make.

That wasn’t easy right?

How many others would have thrown in the towel if faced with the same challenges?

You see most people either do not ever start or quit before they are finished.

Not you.

Beauty is very subjective.

Since you are a finisher, a winning horse, then you earned your victory lap around the track.  So take your time sizing up what you have accomplished and explaining the beauty.

As the artist you have the power to enlighten our eyes by offering a peak behind the curtain.

You will find that your creation or accomplishment is more beautiful to others once they hear the story.

Share the story, share the art, and take your time explaining them both.

Here are a couple of finishers that I have had the privilege of seeing behind the curtain with:

 @CaryPierce1 and @Thegoodrun just released a new album.
@VanceBrown just released his first book.
@Fuelpricing knocked out an epic software release.
Bluff Works just smashed their Kickstarter campaign goal.

What is your story?

What did you just ship?

Love to hear about it.

You Knowing Something…..About Something

What is it that you know?

What is it that you have mastery expertise in?

What have you logged countless hours perfecting?

What will you do with what you know?

How will you value it?

How will you share it?

How much longer will you wait?

Comparing Ourselves

Most people under value their expertise and dismiss its value because it seems small in comparison to (insert your comparison).

My neighbor testifies before congress on his area of expertise in missile defense.

Makes it easy to say “well I don’t testify before congress”.  Right?

I was on a call with a professional acquaintance and I explained to him what I do during @ my day job.

“I have been in the War Rooms of some of the largest Oil companies in the world and am privy to discussing their market strategies, competitive positioning and financial performance.”  

He said, “That is worth a lot in the market.

He asked, “Do you know anyone else who knows this much about the Gasoline markets in the US?”

My answer, “No I guess I don’t.”  There are a handful of people who I have met who have similar expertise, yet I never valued this niche insight before.  

As a result I have started interacting with a publisher of a trade magazine contributing ideas for articles.

Was Fame His Goal?

Fred Beckey was recently featured in Patagonia’s catalog giving honor to a noteworthy and legendary climber.  He is known for having pioneered over 100 first ascents in his 70 year climbing career.

That means that he was the first guy to the top of a mountain on a route or peak that was never climbed before.

I am sure if you asked him when he started climbing alpine routes in the Cascades of the Pacific Northwest was he doing it so he could write a guide-book that would be sold by Patagonia?

Answer: “No”.

And decades later, what he knows, what he has experienced, turns out to be highly valuable to some people.

Will it be a New York Best Seller?  Probably not, but does that diminish its value?

You decide.

Key Questions

Is it important how much it is worth $ in order to pursue?

What do you know that is worth something to someone else?

How much is it worth?

Does it have to be worth an exchange of money for it to be valuable?  

What if the worth is simply knowledge exchange?

What will you do with what you know?  How will you value it?  How will you share it?

Get started.

Good Relationships Equal Good Business

Recently on a trip to Nashville, TN an older wiser man told me “From good relationships comes good business”.  Although some may claim that is obvious, few choose that narrow road.

This week our software company has received two significant referrals to prospective customers.  Yes our software solution is solid and very compelling.  However, that is not the primary reason the customer is willing to jump on a call with a competitor to sing our song.

The relationship that we have invested in is worthy of sharing.  Through thick and thin, we have shown our true colors.

Software can be copied.

Relationships have to be forged.  And few are willing to put in the work.

Cultivate good relationships like you would care for your own private garden.

Your business will have a great harvest.

It is More Difficult to Be Chosen in a Noisy World

You shouldn’t base your future success on the number of Facebook likes you have.

A retweet is not a success.  Nor is the number of empty followers you have collected in trade for shallow allegiance.

You need more than this to be sustainable.

Social Media has a catch.

Yes Social Media has changed the opportunity for you to offer your Art to the world.

But there is a catch.

The mass of content being generated today compound by the immediacy of distribution is making it more difficult than ever before to be chosen.

Previously in history distribution was the major challenge in order for your innovation to reach the masses.

Today, with the click of your mouse you can distribute and deliver everything from your musing thoughts to a product that you created with recycled material in your basement.

And you are among a sea of competitors adding to the noise attempting to allure eyeballs, ears and hearts.

How will you and I be any different?

Two formulas of Social Media today:

1) Ease of communication x large crowds = higher probability of being noticed.

2) More content x short attention spans = quickly move on to something else.  

Understand how ideas and products are accepted.

The Diffusion of Innovation graph is often used when dissecting the stages and speed of adoption.

Key ingredients required are:

  1. The Innovation (Your Art, business, book, music, message)
  2. Communication Channel (Blog, Social Media)
  3. Time
  4. Social System (The Crowd, Your Tribe)

Although we have never had a vaster Communication Channel it has become saturated and polluted with noise.

In today’s instantaneous e-world the speed of adoption is accelerated.  Yes, you can indeed know within hours or days if your Kickstarter campaign is going to be funded.  The downfall is the speed of departure has increased as well.

How many Kickstarter campaigns are there to choose from before they choose yours?

Fickle Faster

The world is rapidly becoming more fickle, faster. In order for your innovation or Art to be adopted it has to be plucked out like a small needle in a one tall haystack standing in a thousand acre field at harvest time.

Your innovation or creation may instantly receive massive distribution but there is another one right behind it to capture the attention of the adopters.  The “Like” button or a re-tweet requires so little allegiance or conviction.  And the brevity of the impact is fleeting.

Sustainability is still core to survival.

Continual value over time is infinitely more important than a spike, a peak or even a dip in your Google Analytics stats.

The issue is that the information globe has increased its speed of rotation. The rotation increase has caused more of our vision to be blurred. We see more, but we see it at such a high speed that it is something like driving down the Las Vegas strip at 100 MPH.

Yes, we saw it.

Yes we were there, but none of it sticks.

What do we do?  What choices do we have?

  1. Invest your time in original creations, not knock offs and redistribution of someone else’s Art.
  2. Turn off your Google Analytics and offer your Art to those people who have already chosen you.
  3. Change your definition of what it means to be rich and famous.