Practice In Private.

It's en vogue to #BuildInPublic (BIP).  Everywhere you turn on social media, you’ve got people churning out new content at a mile a minute.   Everyone, their dog, and their brother are trying to launch their new “life coaching”  or “solopreneurship”  gig du jour.   I don’t get it.

I am not against half-baked ideas.  Some of the best things in life started out totally randomly.  Whether the Post-It notes (failed experiment for strong adhesive) or Slack (started as an internal communication tool within a videogame), you never really know where your best idea will be born.  By all means, please experiment and mess around – but a lot of #BuildInPublic seems destined — no designed —  to be dead on arrival. 

My main gripe with #BIP is the maniacal focus on “popularity.”   The basic theory is by shipping early you get continuous feedback on where to go.  Double down on the tweet that gets the most likes.  All that unpopular stuff that didn’t garner attention?  Throw it away. 

The problem is popularity, and valuable insights are uncorrelated. Some of the best things in this world started out unpopular (*cough*).  

This pattern is littered all through the history of creation.  Whether you look at Steve Jobs (kicked out of Apple in 1985 for his “unpopular crazy ideas”) or JK Rowling (whose manuscript for her first book was rejected 14 times!), overcoming rejection is par for the course.  By focusing on what’s popular, you reject or ignore your most valuable insights. If you only follow average popular advice, you get – well average outcomes! 

So,  I am not a fan of #BIP. But why practice in private?

Having a private “sandbox” where you can practice is a safe space to experiment. You’re still working out how it works.  Figuring out hard stuff takes time. 

Even the greats need time to figure it out. Steve Jobs, investment in Pixar took ~10 years and over $50 million in capital to get to “Toy Story,” its first real hit.  Through that whole 10-year period, Pixar was a private company and pivoted through at least 3 different business models. It was no coincidence that Pixar had an IPO and debuted as a public company in November 1995, a few weeks after the release of Toy Story. 

I don’t plan to start a publicly listed company. Chances are, neither do you. So why is Steve Jobs’s story pertinent? The point isn’t about size but rather motivation, perseverance, and the runway to develop your vision.  Just like it’s hard to have shareholders and work on the “crazy idea,” setting the constraint to be immediately “popular” or generating income is poisonous to playing the long game.

As part of my day job, I own and run a consulting company that gives me a unique lens into the businesses of many highly successful entrepreneurs. Income statements, balance sheets, and cash flow statements may be boring, but they don’t lie. I am routinely surprised when I interview these women and men who run 7 to 9-digit recurring revenue companies. It's just surprising how understated they often are.  Many have no online presence.  They just had their head down doing hard stuff, putting in the reps, and compounding year after year. 

Forge the likes. Forget #BIP. Play the long game and Practice in Private.