Just leave me to do my work!

This blog from Seth Godin is so wise for me right now, as I have had myself 'working' on a project now but from the wrong angle.So I put it in entirety without comment so I can remember the lessons from it.

"Just leave me to do my work!"

I need a sales rep (or ten) to do the selling so I can do my work.

And investors to put up the money so I can do my work.

And an accounting staff so I won't have to think about inflows and outflows so I can do my work.

And an admin to process and answer all my email and my paperwork...

And employees who already know what to do so they won't ask me...

And an organization that not only doesn't make me go to meetings, but also instantly understands and adopts my best ideas...

And a coffee boy to bring me an espresso, a police escort so I don't get stuck in traffic and a publicist so every media outlet in the world communicates what I'm working on.

By now, you've probably realized:

This isn't going to happen. Not as completely or as flawlessly as we'd like to hope. We need the leverage that comes from working with other people, but that leverage also means that we're responsible. People who do great work also embrace the fact that this is their work too. It's not merely an interruption or a distraction, it's part of what they do.

There are no monasteries reserved for productive, successful artists who regularly ship inspiring work. 

Our culture responds to instigators and impresarios who figure out how to make a ruckus in a complicated world.

Years ago, you had to work with a quill or a manual typewriter. You needed to wait for the post office and you had no free and highly-leveraged outlet for your work to be seen by others. You had no access to a huge, instant and free library of the work that has come before... and yet, despite all of those missing elements, great work was created.

My guess is that the few people who find themselves isolated with nothing to do but what they believe is their work find a way to distract themselves with something anyway.

And people who have too many distractions to actually do any real work are in that bind because they haven't invested enough time, effort or risk in their organization and their process. 

Yes, there's a sweet spot.

As you obtain leverage, that leverage becomes part of what your work becomes.

We are leaving you to do your work. Go!

Tonight I will do this - a simple action list.

Taken from a blog of someone who has a book coming out which I think I will buy if on Kindle. 

Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less.

Distinguishing the “trivial many” from the “vital few” can be applied to every kind of human endeavor and has been done so persuasively by Richard Koch, author of several books on how to apply the Pareto Principle to everyday life. Indeed, the examples are everywhere.

Think of Sir Isaac Pitman, the inventor of shorthand, who discovered that just 700 words make up two-thirds of our language (further validated by Zipf's Law).

Think of Warren Buffett’s philosophy, quoted by Mary Buffett and David Clark in The Tao of Warren Buffett, “You only have to do a few things right in your life, so long as you don’t do too many things wrong.” 

The authors continue, “Warren decided early in his career it would be impossible for him to make hundreds of right investment decisions, so he decided that he would invest only in the business that he was absolutely sure of, and then bet heavily on them. He owes 90% of his wealth to just ten investments. Sometimes what you don’t do is just as important as what you do.”

Now that IS a book I have read. And took to heart. 

The advice in there is similar to what can happen with software and mobile apps - two things I love - as often you can have an app that tries to do too many things and therefore does nothing well. The same can be said for software and even computer games. Often simple is best. 

Which is something we are finding out at JusTaxi - Manchester's taxi fare comparison app - as under my (and others) thinking we removed half of the screens and at least two features / functions. This resulted in a 200% increase in numbers of people booking the best taxi prices in Manchester on our app.  

On a different but similar vein, about not being overwhelmed, Greg McKeown who wrote this article says - he recommends a simple action list.

1. Before you leave the office today, write down your top six priorities for tomorrow on a Post-it note.

2. Cross off the bottom five.

3. Write down your priority on a Post-it note and put it on your computer.

4. Schedule a 90-minute window to work on your top priority — preferably the first thing of the day.

5. Every time you are about to check email, Facebook, Twitter etc., write down what you are about to do.

Let's see how this goes. 

20 business lessons you don’t want to learn the hard way but you probably will.

Inspired by an old colleague of mine - this is a post stolen from someone else (i.e. found on Forbes)

It's all about failure and lists 20 things you shouldn't have to learn the hard way. Ironically, I 'learned' a few of things when working with the colleague who inspired me - especially number 9 and 13.

A lot of the other ones, like the first one, I learned all by myself - the hard way.

I keep it here to remind myself - especially about number 20 - enjoy :) 

1.       You can’t do everything on your own. Building a team is essential because there are only so many hours one person can devote to a business. Exactly when you reach that limit depends on your other obligations. If you’re a young single person, you might be able to do everything for a year or two. But if you have a family, your dedication will eventually hurt those relationships. Build a team that can carry on when you’re not around.

2.      You may think your product is perfect, but your clients won’t. Listen to user feedback: Your opinion may not be the best one. The key takeaway here is “release your product early and release it often.” You won’t know if you have a great product until it’s in the field and users are beating it up. It’s like some of the contestants on American Idol. They think they’re talented, and their friends and family think so, too, but when they get on a bigger stage, their flaws become obvious.

3.      Do one thing really well. Entrepreneurs try to be everything to everyone, but it’s hard to be the store that sells bait and baby toys and vintage Beatles albums. Specialize, and you can charge for what you do provide. That said, if there is a skill or service that would make your core product better, provide it.

4.      Get paid before you hand over a project to a client. This is especially important if you provide a service. Once you turn over that contract or website or design project, you won’t have much bargaining power. When I was a graphic designer, I watermarked all my projects and hosted websites on a private domain until the bill was paid.

5.      Undercharging is not sustainable. You think, “I don’t need to charge $150 an hour, I can charge $70 and make way more than I was making as an employee!” But you might find out a short time later that your “great” rate is unsustainable. By the time you pay taxes, employees, business licenses, insurance, etc., that $150/hour is looking more realistic. Compete on quality, expertise and your niche focus (see #3) instead of price. When competing on price alone, the clients who are price-shopping will always leave for the person or company that undercuts you.

6.      Patience and flexibility help you survive the lean times. ShortStack started out as a side project at my web and graphic design studio. We weren’t a software development studio, but when a client asked us for a software product, we didn’t say no. We were patient, scaled slowly — partly out of necessity — and it allowed me to build with company without debt.

7.      Build for your actual market. All of my software-building experience so far has been in answer to a demand. It is purely opportunistic. If you’re an app developer and you think “Wow, I think xx industry could use xx,” you might be disappointed. Put another way: I would never start a restaurant without having worked in one…for a long time!

8.     Never enter a partnership without a buy/sell agreement. No matter how well you think you know someone, you just don’t know when he or she will want to retire or do something else. Even if it’s on amicable terms, know how you can get rid of one another when it’s time for one of you to move on.

9.      Be grateful. Appreciate loyal customers who show you there is a demand for what you do. There is no dollar amount you can put on brand advocates. Good will translates to loyal customers.

10.  Look after those who look after you.  ShortStack, who wrote this piece over referral’s  but it’s very much under the radar. They want people to recommend the product because they like it, not because they’ll say anything for a dollar. If they notice someone said nice things about them publicly, they might send them a t-shirt as a thank you. If they do it again and again, they might say, “Hey, you should become a referrer and earn a percentage of the business you send our way.”

11.   It’s not a sale until it’s paid for. This sounds obvious, but I’ve known small business owners who get very excited about orders and/or meetings with prospective clients. But until the money for those products or services is in the bank, it doesn’t count.

12.  You’ll make more money being “wrong” than proving you are right. Rather than fight with an unhappy customer and say, “You’re using it incorrectly,” or “You don’t know enough CSS to use our product,” we just refund their money. In the long run, these people consume so much of the support team’s time and energy that it’s more cost effective this way. They’re not our ideal client, and that’s OK.

13.  People don’t leave companies — they leave management. This lesson goes for both employees and customers. A manager will lose staff if the employees think they’re not being listened to or valued. Customers will stop using your products or services if they are dissatisfied with them. The quality and reliability of your products and services is a reflection of management.

14.  The way you present your business should be a reflection of your audience. If you have serious clients, be serious. If you have hip, fun-loving clients, have a sense of humor. You have to find your niche and build your content to suit them. For example Constant Contact and MailChimp do essentially the same thing, but their marketing content reflects very different client bases. (Ed. Something we have to think about more at Justaxi - a mobile app which helps people get the best taxi price... we have many competitors but hopefully not for the new market we are aiming at with our new marketing.)

15.   Agree on scope in advance. Have a clear contract before work begins. Once a project goes beyond the documented plan, charge for it. If you agreed to build a website with 10 pages, but soon the site is 20 pages, the client should pay you for them. If your contract makes that clear at the outset, it is easier to control scope creep.

16.  If your company sells a variety of products, make sure you know how to use/operate every single one of them. It might sound like a tall order — depending on how many products your company sells — but learning to use what your company sells will help you look at things with fresh eyes.

17.   When you think you’ve tested your product enough, test it some more. Never release a product until it has been tested and tested and tested by people who don’t work for you. 

 

18.  Understand how social media networks work. When Twitter was first available for businesses, I’d see people use it like an ad in a newspaper. If you go on a channel and use it the wrong way, it could do more long-term harm than good.

19.  Save up. You can operate at a loss for a number of years but you can only run out of cash once. Have a rainy day fund that has at least two or three months’ operating costs in it. And have a line of credit available, even if you don’t plan to use it. Having a CPA look at your books once a quarter is also a must. (Ed. I do it daily for JusTaxi - but we are a mobile app so it might be different for everyone else.)

20. Always let the CFO pay for drinks. Cheers!

 The last one I managed to do just before I left my last client - but it was over Christmas so I cheated a little ;)

I gotta stop doing this - I Gotta Stop Trying to Catch Lightning in a Bottle

A couple of points so wise from Mark Sustner that I pop them here to remember them. So I will TAKE ACTION at my new start up company.

Today I get my developers to launch the game - hopefully with my client at Justaxi - on my final day - NO matter what..............

I also went to the Lean Start Up Manchester event last night - which inspired me. This is a great blog from Mark as well.

"I’m sure you’ve all heard the saying derived from Voltaire - “don’t let perfect be the enemy of the good” which in a way is encapsulated in the lean startup movement and the ideology of shipping a “minimum viable product” (MVP) and then learning from your customer base.

Or to borrow a simple life lesson from Gretchen Rubin,

“The 20-minute walk I take is better than the 3-mile run I never start. Having people over for take-out is better than never having people to an elegant dinner party.”

I think about this topic of perfection being the enemy of the good often. Because I live in startup land where everybody is a perfectionist. I think this is particularly true because every startup entrepreneur is trying to catch lightning in a bottle.

I hear about it in every first product release. You can see it in the founders’ eyes. They want the perfect feature set, the PR company lined up to do the perfect press release, they want maximum coverage, rave reviews, viral adoption and they want to sit back and then wait for the signups to come roaring in.

Life doesn’t work like that. And gearing yourself up for a lighting-in-a-bottle moment leads to bad company decisions.

Even in the age of MVP worship I see founders who want to bundle too many features into a release because they’re worried that customers will be unhappy if they don’t.

I see teams holding back on product releases even when the product is complete because they’re nervous it’s not yet good enough to get positive journalist reviews.

They hold back on announcing their funding because they want to be sure they have 3 other important announcements to bundle – I often counsel against this.

Stop trying to catch lighting in a bottle.


Your announcement will lead to more traffic than you’ve had in the past. But it’s highly unlikely to have that aha moment that Apple gets when it announces new products.

The much more likely result is that you get some positive feedback from the community, you get some strong users who like your product, you get some people telling you your product isn’t as good as the competitors or isn’t as good as your marketing hype.

That’s ok.

Launch and learn.

JFDI.

No battle plan ever survives contact with the enemy.

So the sooner you’re live the sooner you’ll be able to separate your own internal BS from what the market really wants and thinks.

The other reason I counsel so much on this topic is confidence.

You gear your team up for your TC Disrupt presentation, your interview with Kara Swisher, your graduation day from YC and waiting for the product success.

And when it doesn’t come in droves it feels like defeat. And the whole company feels it because you set expectations too high.

The golden rule of management is to set low expectations and beat them. Lightning in a bottle breaks the cardinal rule.

So be prepared for the marathon. Expects a long, slow linear climb.

After all – some people win the lottery. And that’s who you read about in the papers. And it feels nice to think that $285 million is just one Lotto ticket away.

But you’re a pragmatist. And you know that your success will come from the hard work and refinement of 20 different product releases each that incrementally made you the great company that you are.

And by being in the game long enough – if you’re lucky, smart & tenacious – you might just see that traffic & revenue arc up.

p.s. no – I’m not talking about your specific company. I know I gave you this advice so you think I’m picking on you. I give this advice to every young startup. Promise."

Defeat Distraction: Refocusing with Purpose By Leo Babauta: Some great tips...

So relevant for me today - that I had to blog it down. This afternoon will be a very different few hours of working.

Here’s a scenario: you jump into email or [insert preferred social network here] and start doing a few tasks, reading a few things, taking care of business … but soon get lost in the swarm of distractions of little things, and two hours have gone by without getting anything important or meaningful done.

Ever happened to you?

Sometimes a big task will sit there on your todo list or email inbox, but you keep putting it off because you’re in the quick-task mode. It’s hard to do slower, more thoughtful tasks when you’re in quick-task mode.

This happens to me all the time. I will breeze through 10-15 emails because they require 1-2 sentence replies or a 2-minute task each, which means I can knock them off. But a larger task sits there in my inbox, waiting for action, and can sit there for an entire day or two.

Why? Because it requires a different mode of thinking.

And so we put it off, and let the distractions of the Internet carry us away instead.

What’s a better method? Refocus yourself. Change modes. Have a purpose for each thing you set out to do. This works for me every time.

Here’s how:

Catch yourself getting lost.

When you see yourself putting off a bigger email or task, and getting lost in little tasks or distractions, notice this. Watch yourself. Then pause.

Pull back.

Take just 10-20 seconds to stop what you’re doing, and take a step back. Look at the bigger picture of what you’re doing. What’s the most important thing you could be doing right now? A bunch of little tasks? Or is there something with more meaning on your list?

Change your mode of thinking.

When you’re in quick-task mode, you’re not going to be able to handle something that requires more focus and thought. Writing a longer piece is impossible when your brain is in quick-task mode. So, as you’re paused, refocus and change your mode. Prepare yourself for something with less switching and more staying.

Know your intention.

Taking a few seconds to remind yourself of your intention as you start a task is a good idea. If you’re going to write something, what’s the purpose of the writing? Who is it helping? How is it changing the world?

Taking just a few moments to see the bigger picture, change your mode of thinking, and set your intention for your new task is an important investment. It’s an easy thing to do, but it can change your work completely.