I’ve been working on a brand new book for a few months now. Part memoir, part self-help book, it’s a humorous look at the predicaments women face in society today. Each chapter is organized as a different piece of advice for dealing with issues that women (and those who identify as women) encounter on a daily basis. This is a first draft excerpt that I particularly like from a chapter called Ask for Forgiveness, Not Permission. I hope you enjoy it!
Start Small
Starting small can be magical. Pilots can work wonders and prove out your theories. Small habit changes can lead to bigger changes. There are two books I love about habit change. One is called Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones by James Clear and one is Tiny Habits: The Small Changes That Change Everything by BJ Fogg. Both offer the same advice: if you want to make a change, start with the smallest change possible and piggy-back that onto a habit (or process) you already do. BJ Fogg used to do a push-up after every time he went to the bathroom, for example, as a way to incorporate more strength training into his life. Now, that’s a tiny habit! But once you build that new habit, it’s easier to grow it to, say, 10 push-ups.
Pilots also give you an opportunity to involve other people who may be just as passionate as you are about solving the problem. Many of the pilots I’ve run at work involved me finding one team to try out a process change. I’d look for the team that was feeling a pain point the most and/or that had the most open-minded people. I wanted the pilot to be as successful as possible, so I would involve the right people from the start. Once you have others on board, they can help advocate for what they’ve learned and for making the pilot project a permanent project.
Start Your Business or Project Small
Most things can be started scrappily. Even entire businesses. I’ve learned that very few businesses actually need a lot of start-up funding. Want to start a restaurant? Try a food truck first and see which locations your customers like best before investing in a full restaurant. Or you can sell food at a farmer’s market to prove out your ideas and hone your skills first. Want to start a software company? Start by talking to customers and building one thing a week, shipping it and getting feedback while you keep your day job. This is exactly what I teach in my Computer Science Capstone course and what I advocate for in my first book, Agile Discovery and Delivery. Every successful business uses some form of a pilot to get started and then builds on that as they find success.
Success Stories From Starting Small
Patagonia founder, Yvon Choinard, started his business by teaching himself blacksmithing and selling reusable climbing hardware out of the back of his car. Now, Patagonia is a worth $3 billion and I would argue much more than that if you count the earth-friendly practices at the heart of Choinard’s business. Sara Blakeley started Spanx after she became frustrated with panty hose (who isn’t??) and cut the feet off a pair to wear under her pants. She used her entire $5,000 savings to get started and even wrote her own patent to save money. Now Spanx is worth $1.2 billion. GitHub, the essential source control tool that most software engineers use today, was a weekend project for founders Chris Wanstrath, Tom Preston-Werner and PJ Hyett. They were seeking a better way to collaborate on projects and they found it, to the tune of $7.5 billion when Microsoft bought them in 2018.
Get Started Now
How do you do what they did? Alan & Katie Donegan of the The Rebel Entrepreneur podcast and The Rebel Business School share stories and courses from businesses who have exclusively bootstrapped themselves (i.e. they’ve self-funded their start-up). If you don’t know where to start, take a course from them! The Simple Start-up hosts similar courses and even has workshops for entrepreneurial kids!
If you’re trying to start a project, not a business, I highly recommend reading up on Lean Start-up and Design Thinking techniques. You can get the cliff’s notes version of them from my first book, Agile Discovery & Delivery. In essence, start with something small, build a prototype, test it, get feedback, and then pivot or persevere towards success. It works in business and it works in your personal life too. I don’t know how many times we, as parents, have probably done this without thinking. We make a small change with our kids to change their behavior, see if it works, then either continue or try something new.
Just One Thing
Sometimes it’s hard to stay motivated or to carve out the space to just do something. I just finished reading the book The One Thing by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan. They advocate for asking yourself one key question all the time:
“What’s the ONE thing I can do such that by doing it everything else will be easier or unnecessary?”
You can ask yourself this question about the big picture:
“What’s the ONE thing I want to do someday?”
And then you can dial it back and continue to ask the question about what you should do more immediately.
What’s the ONE thing I can do in the next five years to achieve my someday goal?
What’s the ONE thing I can do in the next year to achieve that five-year goal?
What’s the ONE thing I can do in the next month to achieve that one-year goal?
What’s the ONE thing I can do in the next week to achieve that one-month goal?
What’s the ONE thing I can do today to achieve my weekly goal?
What’s the ONE thing I can do right now to achieve my daily goal?
And that, my friends, is how I ended up writing this section. I realized that if I really wanted to make a difference towards my someday goal of being an active speaker and coach for women in tech, that I needed to get this book done and I needed to write right now.
Find Some Accountability
Aside from gaining clarity and focus, having some sort of accountability can help. That’s why finding the other people who care about your goal is so important. Finding that team to run the pilot with can give you accountability. Finding a friend who can check-in on your goal can bring you accountability. Maybe your manager will give you accountability. If all else fails, I have found great success, both in business and with my health in hiring a coach, who can give me accountability.
When I sat down to write my first book, I joined a group called Writing in Community. Sadly that group no longer exists, but it was a group of writers looking for that same accountability. That group gave us a space to write daily and people who would give us feedback on our work. It gave us connection and encouragement. Finding a group like my writing group can mean the difference between success and failure – especially if you’re working on a project that no one gave you permission to work on!
You don’t need permission to move forward on a good idea. You just need a little drive, creativity, and accountability.
Whatever it is you want to do, just do it. Worst case scenario, it fails or someone tells you to stop. But you always learn something. And, you can always apologize later (but, funny enough, you’ll likely never have to). Most projects gain momentum when people see what its accomplishing. Ignore the no’s in your life and just get started.