This is the biggest lesson I’ve learned from entrepreneurs: Everything is a learning experience.
If there’s one thing that unites all the successful entrepreneurs I’ve interviewed, it’s that they are learning constantly. Books, podcasts, audiobooks, interviewing, networking, conferences…all of these things show up in my guests’ lives because knowledge is a great investment. Scott Adams (the ‘Dilbert’ guy) pointed out this gem on another podcast: your product is not the product, your business is not the product, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT! Whether or not the things you succeed, you have still increased your own value and worth because you have gained precious knowledge and experience.
guests have discovered the power of learning by doing. If you want to understand how to start a business, try to start a business. If you want to become good at selling, get experience selling. Whatever you want to learn, start doing it. You aren’t going to get good at skiing by reading books about it, or sitting in a classroom…you are going to get good at skiing by awkwardly strapping yourself in to some shitty boots and crashing your way down a mountain over and over. The more times you can pick yourself up and keep going, the more you will learn. I think one of the best quotes ever comes from the show Adventure Time, “Sucking at something is the first step to becoming sort of good at something.” If you want to accelerate your learning, accelerate your doing. There is no faster way to learn than by getting into the thick of it.
When you shift your thinking in this way, your perspective will change in amazing ways. Failure ceases to exist as a concept (another common refrain of guests), because even a horrible experience has value; frustration becomes a matter of perspective.
Personally, I spent 3 hours this week researching web hosting, which absolutely had the potential to be frustrating. I could easily see those hours as a waste of time. I still haven’t fixed my original issue, I still don’t know very much, and it wasn’t fun to learn about. However! I reflected on the experience, noted that I had quadrupled my knowledge of this subject in 3 hours, and might quadruple it again in another 3. So then I chalked it all up as a learning experience, and felt pretty good about it. I learned something that will make me more useful in the future, and more importantly, I got better at learning how to learn.
When you adopt this attitude, you start finding extra opportunities to learn. I met a friend at his work to get coffee this morning, and our meet-up was kind of a bust. We didn’t plan it that well, his morning was unexpectedly hectic, and so we didn’t really get into a great conversation like we usually do. However, I did meet the barista at his work, and was struck by how charming and personable she was. I would actually estimate that 98-99% of people do not have her unique ability to make you feel that special. My point isn’t that she was delightful, though. It’s that she highlighted a gap in my own abilities (customer experience) that I hadn’t given much thought to until today.
A common piece of advice for entrepreneurs (and business operators more generally) is that you need to focus on your unique ability (to borrow Dan Sullivan’s phrase), and rely on others for everything else. Whatever you do best and have the most fun doing, do that. For everything else that matters, you need to bring in other people. If I ever create a business where customer experience is remotely important, I need to bring in someone with her gift.
Do you see where I’m going with this? While I could look at this morning’s meeting as a minor disappointment I can instead focus on the fact that I got a great lesson on the importance of partnerships and hiring. That’s what happens when you treat everything as a learning experience.
A bonus thought: when it comes to learning by doing, everyone’s experiences will be a little different and create different knowledge sets. Odds are you’ll do more of what you like, and less of what you don’t. When it comes to maximizing your value, this is awesome. You want to be a great fit for a few things, rather than a mediocre fit for everything. So by following your own path, you create a unique knowledge asset that differentiates you. The longer, and more earnestly you do this, the more valuable and differentiated you become. So start doing.