Ep. 12 – Ship It
5 Minute Rants by THE a.m.
A podcast predicated on the journey of business and life.
Ep. 12 – Ship It
You will never figure it out if you don’t just ship it.
All your plans are just theory until you test them and try them.
Business is just like science.
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You will never figure it out if you don’t just ship it. All your plans are just theory […]
June 25, 2023
Episode Transcript
Michael Abernathy 0:00
Hey what’s up everybody? Welcome to THE a.m. I am your host, Michael Abernathy. Welcome to today’s segment of 5 Minute Rants where we talk about anything in everything predicated on the journey of life. So from business stuff, to life stuff, growth, improvement, and all of those other good things.
So what we’re going to talk about today is one of my favorite terms. And it’s called “Ship It.” So today’s episode is “Ship It.” And what do I mean by that? This is what I mean by that, it is better to execute and ship something than actually hold on to it, okay?
So the tech community found This out pretty early on, you know, later in the early 2000s, that doing small iterations of code, and shipping small features, 10 times a day is way better than a six month round of one massive iteration to ship. What does that mean? That means if you’re creating content, you need to ship it. That means if you are just thinking about a new offering, and you’ve got about, I would say 50% – 60% of it, 70% of it, ship it, right? And shipping is actually more important than ideation in some ways.
Okay, I’m not saying you shouldn’t do things without a plan. I’m not saying you shouldn’t think about stuff. That’s not what I’m talking about. What I am talking about is that shipping it is really where you will find what works, what doesn’t, you’ll find the real work. And you’ll find when it breaks, that’s actually what you’re looking for. And so you’re looking for how things break, you’re looking for leaky pipes in the wall, because if the pipes leaking the wall, guess what you can now fix them, if you find it. And so shipping it is so much more important than Just being perfect.
So you know, early on in business with my partner, Andrew, one of the things that we got trapped in a lot was trying to be perfect, we got trapped and trying to be perfect, we got trapped and trying to make everything good enough to launch. And the question is, is when is good enough, good enough? Right? When is good enough actually going to be that moment, that stage where you move and you ship it? Honestly, it really doesn’t exist?
Okay. Now, I’m not saying you ship a bad product, I’m not saying you ship a faulty product, right, I’m thinking more from the service side of things, I’m thinking more from just the version one the most viable product, once you get the most viable product, you need to ship that sucker. I mean, not most viable, minimum viable product and MVP, you need to ship that sucker get feedback, test it, don’t spend hundreds of hours wasting in research and development, and creation and all these things, and you haven’t shipped it. And you don’t even know if anybody wants it. Because if people want it, they’re going to want that minimum viable product. If people liked the content, they’re going to like that initial content, it’s not going to be this crazy thing that nobody likes, okay.
And so I encourage you all, to have that mindset of shipping it. When you ship it, it also forces the creation of it to be better, it forces the improvement to be better. When you go from nothing to all of a sudden something you now have something to work on. Versus if it stays in idea world. And you’re tinkering with it. And if it stays in that idea world, and you don’t do anything with it, well, guess what? It’s never going to do anything for you either. It’s just an idea. The moment you take that idea, it’s on paper, and then you’re shipping it is really when that idea comes to life. It’s really when that offering comes to life, that solution comes to life. It’s when the content comes to life. It’s when that doorway to interact with people with that idea to get feedback from them actually takes place. But you don’t have any of that unless you ship it.
So one of the things that Andrew and I talk about is if you’re at like 60% – 70%, and you know that it’s at 60% – 70%. Ship it, ship it. I mean, if you’re a heart surgeon, you need to be at 100%, 90% right, but we’re not talking about heart surgery, we’re not talking about life and death matters. We’re talking about cool, I’m doing a podcast, I’m creating some content, ship it. Right? We’re not talking about heart surgery, we’re talking about just creating content. All right, you’re not going to have feedback if you don’t have any content for feedback to exist on. And so I encourage all of y’all to really get in that mindset of ship it right?
I need more customers awesome start marketing, “well I don’t have a logo” who cares ship it, “well I need this” no ship it, right? You can start making a little Facebook page you can do things like that like ship it and I’m talking about from way like early on for this for you guys who are Just starting something ship it. Don’t get trapped in the I don’t look like a big company. I don’t look like a profesional company. I promise you that is not the mindset to be in. Be in the mindset of “shipping it.” Fly the plane, fail fast, and then fix it and build it and then fly it again. Alright guys, I’ll talk to y’all later. Peace!