Month: February 2019

For a long time in school, I was the type of kid to say: “What’s on the test?”

I wanted to know the minimum amount of work I had to learn in order to get the A.

Whatever amount of time that was, how many words, functions, formulas I had to memorize, I would learn it, but never an ounce more.

This translates well into the entrepreneur’s journey with their MVP – or minimum viable product. Other engineers may classify this as your beta or prototype. Something that is good enough to label as your first product.

And it’s important to get out that product, put thoughts into actions, get the ball rolling.

But as we build up speed, we need to not forget the quality of our work. It is this that which sets us apart from our competitors and makes us stand out among our customers/clients.

This especially rings true when working with others.

We all know that this project is a lot of work, that we are putting in a lot of hours, but we cannot let this move us to do the minimum or lower our quality of work.

To steal from Lord of the Rings, we would be trying to scrape butter over too much bread, instead of taking the extra time to get/make more butter.

When we do this and lower our quality, we are showing to others the inconsistency in our work, raising questions of trust, and lowering their belief in our ability to deliver quality in the future.

For this reason, it might not be the best to always finish things so rapidly.

80% done with 100% accuracy can be better than 100% done with 80% accuracy.

 

Today is Super Bowl Sunday.

That means that over 111 million people in the US will be watching.

About 1/3 Americans.

If you are a player on one of the teams, a coach, an announcer, or a referee, you know a lot of eyes will be on you. There is pressure to perform. To give it your best, get the job done, execute.

To get to this level, it’s not what these individuals have done in front of people, but what they have done when no one is watching.

It’s the 4ams, the lost weekends, the missed birthday parties, the years of practice (no one saw) that got them to the place where they are now in the spotlight.

Games aren’t won in the arena.