Cost estimates & cave dwelling

It seems that the #BBB podcast has been providing me with some clear blog ideas recently. Below is a comment I made in one of the podcasts  in regard to the Super Awesome Micro Project – and well, projects in general costing us much more than we ever estimate.

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Now I’m starting to think our human delusions on the real time and cost of embarking on activity helps us grow and expand. So when it comes to time and cost on our next project in 2014, we should probably know it’s wrong, and just do it anyway.

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Don't start a business

No, we shouldn’t do that. It’s such a big thing with no clear way to start, and no clear way to end. There’s a really big chance we could waste a significant amount of financial, temporal and emotional resources on it. It’s too uncertain and adds a whole lot of life complications to it, it takes a lot of organising, registrations, financing, commitment to something for which a future which is unproven.

Here’ a better idea. We should do a project instead. Projects are superior to businesses. Superior because they tell us more about the future. It can sample our predicted future reality and test it for truth. In addition to that it has a number of micro benefits which add up to something significant.

  • A project helps us get over our inertia. It’s only a project.
  • A project can be bootstrapped more heavily, as we don’t need to build in any scale.
  • A project allows us to do a minimum viable product, but actually mean it, and actually do it.
  • A project is not a life long commitment. We can close it off any time for any reason we choose.
  • A project tells our circle and the market that this is temporary, but worth trying.
  • A project doesn’t need huge resources, only enough to cover one cycle.
  • A project is likely maintain momentum and energy as the finish line is in sight from the start.
  • A project let’s us test our assumptions, but in the real world – the market place.
  • A project can lead to a better conceived project.
  • A project can lead to important collaborations and discoveries.
  • A project can lead to something bigger… maybe even a business.
  • A project….

In fact, when we really think about it, business is simply a project which worked well and got bigger. Or we could say that a business is a number of separate yet continuous projects linked together in perpetuity, performed by the same people and infrastructure.

And so, it’s pretty clear if we just start with a project or tow, we might be lucky enough to end up with a business.

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The linear hoax

There is currently no shortage of people talking about the change of the business environment from a linear model to an omni directional one. What we need to understand is that this isn’t limited to business, it’s a wider eco system change.

Last week I was helping a colleague with his transition into his next revenue phase. He was discussing the need to get his credentials and digital footprint in order before he met up with VC’s / recruiters and the like. He didn’t want to go in and meet people unprepared. And it sparked a thought in mind mind:

Why take a linear approach when lessons from each process can inform the other?

We both agreed it makes sense to do things simultaneously, when they interact with each other, as this case seemed to be. If we do them one by one, then the other there is a very good chance we’ll need to rework our effort once we get real ‘in market’ feedback.

The challenge for all of us is knowing which projects are isolated and which ones live in a feedback loop.

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10pm till 1am

My previous blog post has 12 random thoughts I came up with. A few people have commented on twitter wanting more information on some of the points including young gun Adam Jaffrey. His tweet below:

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The point was this:

“What we do after 10pm has a bigger impact on our tomorrow than what we do during business hours.”

Admittedly it is a bit confusing. It could even be read as the need to get enough sleep for an energetic tomorrow. But what I was actually talking about was the ‘long term tomorrow’ and what we do late at night… the stuff we can only do once our daily tasks and family commitments are accounted for.

First of all, we must get our job done, earn our way, eat, cook, clean, be with family and friends, and generally live the tasks of life. This takes time, in fact it takes up most of it for most of us. So we know that in reality there may only be a few short hours left. But we also we know that education is a process and and not an event. And this statement is about that process. The only difference being that the most important educational process these days is not studying for an MBA at nights and weekends, it’s experimenting with the ideas, tools and technology which universities don’t have in their curriculum yet. Mind you it’s not their fault, the world just happens to be changing too quickly.

While others settle in for a night of TV, I prefer to get busy on projects. Read about technology, write an article, build a new presentation, help a startup, work on an upcoming lecture at Melbourne University, go to a hackers event… but most recently work on the Super Awesome Micro Project with Raul. We skype chat every night and plan our next steps. Not only is it inspiring, but it is building new skill sets which make me anti-fragile. More valued to the market and most importantly differentiated. The problem with traditional education is that most people have it. The problem with corporate experience is that most people have it. The problem with industry knowledge is that it ties us to a location and is probably going to become irrelevant. Technological disruption means we need to be wide in our skill base, not thin and vertical. And the best way to get a wide base of skills is the become a night time projecteer between the hours of 10pm -1am. (or whichever hours work for you). We need to be pyramids, not sky scrapers.

Not only are broad skilled business people now in greater demand, they are much harder to knock over.

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Passion is not enough

We are often told we need to be passionate about our work, our startup or the product we are selling. And while it is true, it is also a little bit ephemeral. Today I heard a better way to describe what we need to do to sell our ideas from Brian Tracy – whose an old school business coach, though his approach is still highly relevant today. Brain says we need to be able to do this:

Transfer our enthusiasm.

I love it, and I’m going to use it as a way to judge myself after I present an idea or project to people in the future.

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Mid Year Shame

At the end of 2011 I sat down diligently to plan my goals for the coming year. I had a list of around 10. Some of which were big, and some small but important. We are now more than half way through 2012 and I am ashamed to admit that I have only completed 1 of these tasks.

While I have done some things which were not on the list. I sent a Lego Space Shuttle into Space and got global news coverage, and started the Super Awesome Micro Project which is a new crowd funded world first project that raised $20k via twitter alone… I’m pretty down that I have achieved so little this year. The ironic thing is the only thing on the list that I have actually completed was fixing my Galaga Arcade machine as seen below….

Maybe the lesson from the only thing I have done in 2012 is this – start having more fun?

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Just make stuff

A mini mantra for entrepreneurs:

This is what I am going to do…

Here is why I am going to do it…

This is the result I am hoping for…

I am not asking for permission. I’m starting today. It’s OK if it doesn’t work out.

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