It doesn’t matter if you’re building web apps, mini-sites, doing PPC marketing, one thing is certain: you’ll never be perfect at it.
I’m a big believer in learning by doing. You can keep reading blogs (like this one), but without any action, you’re just wasting your time.
This is my favorite quote of all time and its a fairly recent one by Seth Godin. To be honest, I never even read his blog until I saw this. But after reading the following I was hooked:
Anxiety is nothing…
but repeatedly re-experiencing failure in advance. What a waste.
Fail Often
No matter how talented you are or how much knowledge you have gained, you are going to end up failing at some point. The most successful companies and startups around, are built upon a series of failures. Yet in hindsight these occurrences are no longer viewed as failures but instead seen as “learning experiences”.
The First Time
The first web app I built was rubbish and never really amounted to anything. The first mini-site(s) I built were the same. It took many goes and experimentation to get it right. Its easy to get discouraged after failing the first time. To overcome this, write down 3exactly what you’re going to next time, and take the first step today. Don’t procrastinate on failures.
You Don’t Need a Template
You can stop searching – you don’t need a template or clone of someone else’s successful site. You don’t need to see how the “pros” build their mini-sites and landing pages. I’ve found the only way I’ve truly managed to get it right is through experimentation. Of course I still draw inspiration from other people, but thats all, inspiration.
In reality the fastest way to build a successful product, service or website is just getting down and dirty and diving head first.
Photo by – Xosé Castro
9 Comments
Anthony, you’re absolutely right. There’s such a disconnect with learning these things. I remember wanting to learn that secret formula… just if someone could tell me exactly what they did and how they did it. That’s not how it works.
Now I have a couple of sites up, am experimenting, have a third one in launching phase. That way, I’ll have 3 sites to experiment with (mini-sites, that is), each in a different phase. Exciting stuff.
But you’ll never get there if you don’t start *now*.
Experimentation, you hit an important factor here. In the few months I have blogged I have learned to experiment to find out what works and what does not. Unfortunately, not all of us learn from our failures, and so we do the same mistakes over and over again.
Success I believe comes from experimentation and learning. Without this knowing, all our effort will be in vain.
Wow. Thanks for the kick up the butt. Always welcome, and very necessary.
It is so true that you can read about and study something as much as you like, but accumulating that knowledge is useless unless you actually implement it.
Great post.
We learn from failure. I learn more things teaching myself through trial and error than any education could ever teach me.
Hey Anthony,
You know, I am sure that this trait/experience is common across successful people in many areas, but I bet it is especially concentrated in good software developers. Almost everyone I’ve met who has really built something successful has *tons* of stories of terrible code, of mistakes made – and often are embarrassed by the first iteration of their now successful product
Personally, I remember the first software program I ever wrote in BASIC – it was a silly little paint program. It took me forever, and it crashed many, many times, and I constantly had to go back and tweak it. Even now, I constantly make mistakes in software development. It bothers me from a professional standpoint in that I don’t like mistakes, but it doesn’t fluster me – getting it wrong from time to time, and learning users don’t know what they want, or ask for the wrong thing, or whatever the case may be is fairly commonplace in software, and I think in some ways builds a thick skin. So what if you make a mistake? It won’t compile, or it’ll be wrong – you’ll just have to go back and fix it =)
Yeah software development is unique in a sense that failure is expected and commonplace. Furthermore, code is released with known bugs (pretty much every major program is released with a list of known bugs which are ignored due to a number of factors).
Well I”m sort of taking this approach with a new site but having trouble gaining traction. How did you get people to start using your app? thks.
My app got coverage on Mashable, Lifehacker, ReadWriteWeb etc. when it launched. This gave it early traction.
Joe drop me a line with details of your app, I’m happy to take a look and give you some suggestions on who to to contact regarding press coverage.
Very true, I love that quote. I’ve been starting to take action with things, and by starting a project I can see where I need to improve, or better still how to develop an idea into something else.
I like Joe, find the traction thing really hard, but I guess you just have to patient.