Imagine spending an entire year and six thousand dollars creating a product that resulted in about a handful of sales. That’s exactly what happened to my husband and me when we co-created a skill-building planner.
We were aiming for perfection with our Daily Skill Planner from the start. An endless number of “must haves” accumulated. So did our costs—both in terms of time and money. We found ourselves working tirelessly on things that didn’t really matter. It would’ve been better if we’d started small—to test if the overall idea of the planner resonated with people—before adding all of the bells and whistles.
So I’m taking a different approach with new entrepreneurial projects. Instead of aiming for perfection and going large, I’m aiming to get it on the market within a few weeks time by starting small.
Not only does this make business sense: I want to find out what users really need, rather than guess what they need. But I’m also a parent with limited free time. I’ve got to focus on what matters most. Otherwise, I’ll never get anything out the door.
Now I give myself a much smaller time frame for each entrepreneurial project—usually six to seven weeks, not an entire year. A short time frame means I choose smaller projects.
That’s a good thing.
I’d rather “fire bullets, then cannonballs,” as author Jim Collins puts it. A bullet is a “low-cost, low-risk, low-distraction experimen[t]” used to test your idea. Bullets are experiments to see what works, or what doesn’t.
If the bullet shows signs of success, then I’ll put more time and effort into it. It may become a cannonball: a big bet to focus on. Otherwise, I’ll move along, without fretting about the time and money spent. After all, it was just a bullet.
Learning Babies, a website that provides activities for babies, is a recent bullet of mine. I gave myself six weeks to write the content and launch the site. I didn’t have to hire a small team of designers, editors, and illustrators, as we did with Daily Skill Planner. Even still, I had to prioritize to meet my deadline.
And this is another reason why a shorter time frame matters. Instead of doing everything, I’m forced to focus on what matters most. There’s no time for perfection; it’ll delay progress. Since content mattered most for this bullet, I put other things like a sleek design and a newsletter on the back burner. These were nice to haves, not must haves.
Learning Babies is still in the bullet stage. It’s gaining traction, so I’m making enhancements based on what real users want—not what I think they want. This is yet another reason why it’s useful for getting your bullet out the door. If you perfect from the start, then you may be spending time and money on things that users or customers don’t want or care about.
To be clear, I’m not advocating for sloppy work. Rather, I’m suggesting that you pick entrepreneurial bullets, not cannonballs. Focus on the essentials to get your idea on the market within a few weeks and in front of real users. Test your idea with a bullet first before launching a cannonball. After all, it doesn’t have to be perfect from the start; it’s just a bullet.
"If we tried to think of a good idea, we wouldn’t have been able to think of a good idea. You just have to find the solution for a problem in your own life."
-Brian Chesky
Thank you for reading! Feel free to reply to this email and let me know what you think.
-Amy