Why You Don’t Have to Quit Your Job to Get Started (But Not Having a Life Helps)
What does it take to start a startup? Do I need to quit my job to get started? We’ve been wondering this for a while now, and if the past 12 months have taught us anything it’s that you can accomplish quite a lot while still working a full time job.
For the last few years we kept setting ourselves ambitious goals of launching exciting products that would make us millionaires, all the while working full time jobs. Now, we’re not there yet, but we’ve gone from zero successful launches to six in as many months, finally breaking ourselves out of the “Never-Ending Project Cycle Of Doom” we had found ourselves trapped in.
Thankfully it turns out that you don’t need to quit your job to get started, you just need to change your approach. Here’s the top things we changed that have had the biggest impact, and our advice on how you can get started too.
Start small
What we came to realise is that we’d been aiming to launch complex, fully featured products from day one. We thought that we could go from creating nothing to creating the next Periscope in one fell swoop. In reality, we’ve realised it just doesn’t work like that.
It’s tempting to aim to create the next Facebook, Twitter or MySpace (people still use MySpace, right?), but we need to understand how rare these products are and how much work has gone into them. For us, when deciding on an idea, the bigger it was, the better. If we had an idea for a small web app we gave it little thought, but an idea for telepathically controlled presentation software consumed through virtual reality? Sure, let’s jump right in and try and build that.
Our attempts to launch six projects in six months have forced us to narrow our scope dramatically. We thought we had done this with our first project, HowsItGoin, but after launching 250 hours later, we realised we still had a way to go. The next month we launched FlashTabs in 79 hours, followed by Outstanding Bar in just under 60.
Simply put we’ve come to appreciate that you don’t have to create a fully featured, all the bells & whistles product on day 1. Get something out the door, get your first user and grow from there. It’s much easier to grow a product that’s out there and being used by real people than it is to keep slogging away at something that still hasn’t seen the light of day.
Simply put, start small.
Set yourself short & long term goals
I think it’s important to have ambitious long term goals, it’s helpful to know what you’re aiming for. Equally, if not more important though, are your short term goals. To get where you want to be in the next few years you have to do something about it now.
Have long term goals in mind, and short term goals in focus.
When we started out we didn’t really have timeframes in mind, we just started working, hoping that one day we would finally be ‘ready’. That didn’t work. To add to this, we would aim at launching the long term vision right from the start. Without any short term goals to aim towards, we never ended up launching at all.
Setting ourselves short term goals, and deadlines to go with those has been the single biggest factor in our new found ability to launch. The simple fact of knowing we should be launching something in a months time has forced us to focus. You won’t always meet your deadlines but launching late is infinitely better than never launching at all.
Stop trying to make money
If your only focus is making money then you probably won’t succeed. Instead, spend your time creating a product your users will love. If you create something everyone wants to use, then you won’t have to think too hard about how to monetise it, the business model will become obvious.
The disappointing reality is that you’re extremely unlikely to hit the big time with your first idea, but that’s okay. The most important thing is that you make something. If you never manage to launch anything, you’ll never make any money. But as soon as you start building & launching, all of a sudden you have the ability to create something that has the potential to make money.
Despite never setting out to make money, most of the products we launched as part of SixBySix have the potential to make some, and our latest project, FoundersKit, did quite well. Sometimes we spotted this potential early on in the idea stage, sometimes during development, but ultimately despite not really caring about whether the product would make money we’ve created a basis from which we can.
Anything that removes barriers to you launching is a good thing, so if monetising your product adds unnecessary complexity, then seriously consider leaving this to after you’ve launched.
Set aside the time & do the work
There are no quick wins. Short of printing your own money, get rich quick schemes just don’t work. Want the secret to success? Hard work. Every successful person has put in more than their fair share of it. To achieve the goals you have you’ll need to regularly set aside time and put the hours in.
Be realistic
Everyone has their own commitments and therefore limited time available to them. Don’t set out planning to spend 40 hours a week on a side project whilst working a full-time job and looking after your family.
It goes without saying that the less commitments you have the easier it is to dig in and get started, but for those of you with a spouse and/or kids, don’t despair, there is hope.
Take inspiration from Justin Jackson, the guy behind Product People. People called us crazy for trying to launch something each month, but Justin challenged himself to build and launch something each week all the while releasing a podcast episode documenting how it went. Now that is crazy, even before you consider the fact Justin has a full-time job, a wife and 4 kids.
Building & launching something every week definitely isn’t for everyone, but this just goes to show that no matter how many commitments you have, if you want it enough you’ll find time to get something out the door.
Prioritise your priorities
6 years back I went to college where we had no TV and a pretty poor internet connection. This led me to going 2 years with little to no TV at all, and it really surprised me how little I missed it.
Before starting SixBySix Mike used to come home after a days work and spend most of his evening gaming. This certainly didn’t do him any harm, but it definitely didn’t help work towards his goal of running his own business.
Since starting SixBySix Mike’s realised that not only does he hardly game at all now, that when he does he can only do so for a short period of time before wanting to get back to something more productive.
Most of us default into the normality of watching TV, playing games or just chilling out without realising. It might sound obvious, but since getting serious about our goals we’ve become a lot more focussed in how we use our time.
It’s a lot easier to reprioritise and remove the things that aren’t helping you achieve your goals than it is to keep adding new activities on top of your existing schedule.
Quite often there’s time we can redeem. Be it getting up an hour earlier each day or working during your daily commute, if you want to get something done enough you’ll find the time.
Ideas are cheap
We often have romantic views about how our idea will be the next big thing, that if only we had more time or money that we could create the next Airbnb or Buffer. But in truth we tend to overestimate our ideas and underestimate the work it takes to make them a reality.
“It’s the disease of thinking that having a great idea is really 90 percent of the work. And if you just tell people, ‘here’s this great idea,’ then of course they can go off and make it happen. The problem with that is that there’s a tremendous amount of craftsmanship between having a great idea and having a great product.”
— Steve Jobs
It’s unlikely that the idea you have now will be the one that makes your millions, so don’t be too precious with it.
Going it alone can be hard
There are some people out there who work best going solo, but for most of us the benefit of teaming up with someone else far outweighs the potential cost of losing 50% of your future millions. Mike & I have been working together on and off for over 7 years now and have found our teamwork invaluable.
Teaming up with someone else is great for staying motivated and on track. If you’re working alone it can be hard to press through the tough times when there’s little light at the end of the tunnel, but when you’re working with someone else you can spur each other on to keep going.
“Two are better than one,
because they have a good return for their labor:
If either of them falls down,
one can help the other up.
But pity anyone who falls
and has no one to help them up.”—King Solomon
As I said above, don’t fret too hard about whether this idea is going to be your moneymaker. In the long run you’ll be much happier having 50% of an actual pie than 100% of no pie at all.
Whilst we heartily recommend working with others, we realise it’s not always as simple as it sounds, so you may want to check out our checklist of what to look for in a co-founder.
Accountability is key
So you don’t have to team up, but one thing I really recommend is telling someone what you’re doing. It’s easy to go for months working on an idea without telling anyone, but at this stage there’s no real pressure to launch. However, as soon as you tell someone you’re going to do something, all of a sudden there’s another person out there expecting you to deliver.
We’ve found that building in public, be it blogging about your experience or simply telling others what you’re making has been a great way to force ourselves to commit to launching.
Rounding Up
If you’re looking to get your first startup off the ground then rest assured that you don’t need to quit your job to get started. Just remember to start small, set yourself both long & short term goals, make sure you set aside the time needed, prioritise your priorities, don’t get hung up on a single idea and team up (or at the very least tell someone, we’d love to hear about it). Do these six things and we’re sure you’ll be on the right path.
What have been the biggest challenges you’ve faced in getting your project out the door? What are the key lessons you’ve learnt along the way? Drop a response below or tweet me on the twitter, I’d love to hear from you.
Interested in launching side projects? Never launched or looking to up your launch game? I’m co-authoring a new book, “Learning to Launch”, sign up at LearningToLaunch.co and you’ll be the first to hear when it’s ready.
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This post was originally published on wearecontrast.com.
