Unscripted: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Entrepreneurship pdfdrive com

One week of real market engagement is more valuable than one month of market
research and analysis.

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ACTION
“Action” is poking the finicky cat that is the market and seeing what happens.
Most of the time, the cat ignores you; sometimes you’ll hear a meow; and once in
a great while, it’s every entrepreneur’s dream: the loud roar of demand.
Unfortunately, most never poke the cat. Too often, dreampreneurs stay
dreamers because they’re preoccupied with knowing every answer and every
step. They peek into the dark forest and nervously cower, “Can you tell me
exactly what to expect in there?” Remember, there is no freaking list, no paint-
by-numbers plan, and no fairy god-mentor. As a result, these folks sit on their
thumbs for years, reading books and armchair quarterbacking other
entrepreneurs. For example, take this ridiculous forum post:
I have a concept I’d like to try, but I have no idea about building websites, so I
need advice on what to look for and where. My first question is, what is a good
price to charge for advertising? And a good rate to charge for fresh leads?
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Aside from the “I’d like to try,” get a laugh at the tail wagging the dog. Such
an asinine question is like aspiring to be an actor and your first question is
“What should I wear at the Academy Awards?” I’m ashamed when I see
horseshit questions like these polluting my forum. The “give me all the answers
before I start” or the “tell me the exact steps” questions are like clairvoyance—
guaranteed failure preceded by a whole slew of mental masturbation. You see, if
you postpone action until you have all the answers that pave execution, you’ll
never get started. NEVER.
For example, when I started my Internet company, I had little knowledge
about best practices, web technologies, and how to sell customers. I learned
based on the immediate objective in front of me, incrementally and gradually,
each step dictated by continual improvement. Would you believe it started with
learning HTML and the simple “hello world” code? Each step in the build
process (and my personal build process) 
I learned by solving only the problem
that stood in front of me.
How do I randomize directory output? Research, learn, solve. How do I
interact with a database? Research, learn, solve. How do I streamline this
cumbersome billing practice? Research, learn, solve. How do I manage a

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hellacious employee payroll and the regulations surrounding it? Research, learn,
solve.
With each solve, value improved, as did my experience and skill set. After ten
years I probably solved over 1,000 problems. Had I suffered from the "big picture
syndrome", spying the mountain summit while absorbing ALL of these problems
and unknowns in aggregate, I would have been terrified and overwhelmed into
inaction.
This “wing it,” in essence, is kinetic execution.
Many great companies started the same way—with one line of code and no
idea what lay ahead. Of course, this doesn’t mean learning code or following in
my footsteps is the right choice; it simply means to act on one problem, one
challenge, one unknown at a time. The only real problem is the one in front of
you. What needs to be done? Learned? Outsourced? Researched? Do it and move
on to step two.

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ASSESS
In early 2011, about two months after my book was released, it became
painfully clear: my cover, which I designed and loved, sucked. At every turn—
tweets, emails, FB—I heard it.