There’s a wealth of great advice online for people starting their own business. People constantly share their stories of success and failure. Wouldn’t it be great if careers advice was that open?
Here’s a few pieces of startup advice that work just as well as careers advice.
1. Product/Market Fit
Product/market fit is defined as “being in a good market with a product that can satisfy that market”. As careers advice, I’d say that translates to — are you doing interesting things with interested people?
If you’re the kind of person who tunes out when people talk about finding your passion or doing what you love, then think of it as finding product/market fit.
Here’s the thing, until you have product/market fit, you’re going nowhere. So, just like a startup, this should be the source of all your focus until you start to see the signs that you’re on the right path.
2. Get out of the building
One the most useful pieces of startup advice is to get out of the building, to test your ideas in the real world.
As careers advice, I think that stands firm. You might aspire to be a writer, you might even write all the time, but until you get some feedback on your writing, you’ll never know how well you’re doing.
Get out of the building, meet people, share your work, because as difficult as that experience might be, you won’t learn much without it.
A few years ago I made a point of meeting different people in my lunch breaks. As awkward as it was to contact people that I knew only in passing, I found a lot of them were more than happy to talk, and that process was difficult but, of course, rewarding. I had several different ideas that I was interested in pursuing at the time, and those awkward meetings gave him invaluable insights into my future.
3. Fail fast
If something’s not working, ditch it. That’s the meaning but lately it seems like people aren’t so hot on quitting and moving on when the signals are bad. The key to failing fast is being able to weigh your instincts against raw data.
In principle, saving yourself from working on something that will never succeed makes sense, but equally walking away from something that isn’t finished isn’t always the right idea.
I’d balance this out and say use your judgement wisely. This is a question of experience. If you’re stuck in a job that’s making you depressed, then find a way to quit and stay afloat. But if you’re hitting a brick wall that you can sense, or hope, is about to topple, keep trying. And be loud before you fail too — people often assume you’ve going to succeed, so when they hear you want to quit they rally around.
Remember though, being able to fail is a luxury for many people.
4. Iterate
It’s an indelible part of startup culture, the skill to iterate. Not just that, but the wider iterative design process of making something, testing it and learning from the results is what startups do.
How can you map that to your career? By learning to be patient.
No startup launches with the perfect product. They get there by making lots of small adjustments over time. Do the same with your work.
Take your time to plan your steps in light of your entire career. You’ll get where you’re going if you take it one step at a time. As Violeta says, what you do every day is a tattoo in the making. Think about iterating your work with the long term goal of being proud of what you do.
I’m sure there are many more tenets of startup culture that can be used as careers advice, and if you’re interested in opening up about your work, then come join us at Somewhere.
