Finally, my most oft-found fortune cookie fortune has come true. I AM living in interesting times. And so are you. We are living in an era of makers, shakers, doers, and of course haters.
It has never been easier to build something. Less expensive capital, more accessible human resources, more flexible social mores around work-life balance and a creeping consensus that not only is failure OK, it might be life’s most venerated teacher.
I’ve written about getting up off of your butt and kicking your status quo in the face so that you too can have that indescribable feeling of exhilaration mixed with puffy-eyed warm and fuzzy exhaustion that often accompanies working on the things you care about. I believe in the power of passion because I’ve been able to reap a unique kind of satisfaction from creating things. Problem is it is WAAAY too easy to get sucked into the cult of personality surrounding the Entrepreneur (think Great White Buffalo from hot tub time machine style of speaking).
I LOVE makers, creators, doers, idea girls, concept curators, executors (not this guy) and anyone else that has the gumption and constitution to see opportunity where others see problems BUT (and this is a bigger BUT than even Sir Mix-A-Lot would like) I’ve recently started to (begrudgingly) love the hole pokers as well: The skeptics who constructively deconstruct my big ideas with me and make me challenge my assumptions. These are the folks who you can look to for counterpoints and balance. These are the folks who ask
But what if consumers don’t want to keep two separate networks?
These are the people who look at your numbers and say
I like the concept but I just don’t see people consuming TV on smaller screens than their TV
Now, sometimes they are right (turns out WebTv was 10 years too early). Sometimes they are wrong (Esther Dyson turned down an investment opportunity in Linkedin…literally heard this from her mouth in answer to my question about the investment that got away).
YOUR job, if you are creating, is to weigh the validity of the point fairly, calculate the risk and still be crazy enough to take the gamble if you think the skeptic’s perspective holds no merit. YOUR job is to not get so bound up over critical feedback that you are paralyzed or resentful. As a matter of fact YOUR job is to harness a little bit of that skeptic for your own chorus of inner voices.
A good skeptic weighs the opportunity, pressure tests the assumptions and pokes and pokes methodically until they’ve examined the whole of your brain-baby like a good startup pediatrician. A good skeptic can hold certain assumptions constant while prodding others in a thought experiment. A good skeptic knows what it is that they believe specifically is weak about a hypothesis or theory. A bad skeptic refuses to believe but can’t articulate why. A bad skeptic doesn’t bring thoughtful criticism that helps you reexamine and reconstruct assumptions where neccessary…they simply
don’t get it
or fall back on the all time greatest bs question as the reason we should all lay down our entrepreneurial weapons and go get jobs at established companies
But what if Google decides to do this?
These bad skeptics give good skeptics a bad name. These bad skeptics are in fact haters. They don’t propose solutions. They don’t build or create. They only poke holes. There is a smugness that I encountered once in a person I like a lot but lack respect for as a business person. This smugness seemed rooted in a judgement that it was laughable that I thought I could fight the status quo. With this person’s every tilted head, hissing intake:
ssss, I dunno I just can’t see it. why would anyone EVER rent an ipad? Can’t they just buy one or wait til it’s cheaper?
I realized that the hater’s biggest issue may be a profound lack of empathy or alternate perspective. He or she CAN’T (or won’t?) see the world through others’ eyes and so must forever be bound to things as they are and obvious outcomes.
And it began to dawn on me that I should not get mad at the haters. I should instead draw strength from the skepticism and test out the weaknesses pointed out in order to either learn I was right or pivot appropriately.
As it turns out people do want to rent ipads, and music equipment for gigs, and photo gear for shoots…from each other…safely…but I’ve still got LOADS of assumptions that I’m still testing.
So here’s a high-5 to the skeptics who’ve challenged and thoughtfully engaged. And to the haters I say try patching instead of just poking holes. Try building, solving, and doing rather than just meh-ing and naysaying. Hi haters. :)
