Entrepreneurs are famous for seeing the things others cannot. They believe in a truth that seems like fiction to everyone else.
For example, AirBnb founders Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia failed to raise any outside money from late 2007 until early 2009. Maybe it makes sense: a business where strangers stay in each other’s homes doesn’t seem like a winner. In fact, they famously had to sell Obama O’s and Cap’n McCains Cereal to fund their startup, raising $30,000 in the process.
The big challenge, when we are attempting something new and difficult, is to know what to do with outside feedback:
Does what I’m hearing tell me a fundamental truth about the validity of my idea?
OR
Do I have so much conviction in my idea that I’m sure it’s right, despite not having found a customer for what I’m selling…yet.
Our level of conviction determines how we interpret outside feedback.
For example, consider the widespread phenomenon of “kitchen blindness:” the inability to find an item of food that is sitting right in front of you – milk, OJ, the salt or, famously, butter.
While “kitchen blindness” is often be the byproduct of laziness, it’s also true that there are two ways that we look for things:
- When we look without prior knowledge, we use the data that’s coming in (“I’m not finding the baking soda where it’s supposed to be”) as information to confirm or refute our hypothesis that we have baking soda.
- Whereas if we are sure we bought baking soda, and we simply are not finding it in the freezer, we take that to mean that we’ve got to look in the pantry, in the shopping bags, and in the trunk of the car.
One of the hardest lines to walk as an entrepreneur or creator is the daily choice between using outside feedback to adjust / refute our hypothesis vs. sticking to our guns. (for more on learning when to quit, there’s no better book than The Dip by Seth Godin.)
Are they telling me something true that they know and I need to learn?
Or is this my “naysayers be damned” moment, and do I believe, like Steve Jobs did in 2007, that I can design and sell a smartphone that doesn’t have a keypad?
Deep down, it’s a question of conviction:
How sure am I that what I’m looking for is there?
Because if I’m really, really sure, then it really is there, and all I have to do is find it.
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