When is “good enough” good enough?
One of the most valuable lessons I’ve learned in my 2 years as the Spigot Labs founder, head developer, and chief dishwasher is the lesson of “good enough”. I think it’s particularly applicable as a bootstrapped startup, but there are elements that apply to funded startups as well.
It’s simple. When faced with a task that’s not part of your skill set, try it anyway. Spend a few hours building something and then assess how it stands up. Is what you did “good enough”? Does it look professional? Is it something you’re [mostly] proud of? Ship it!
Early on at Spigot Labs, I was being asked for a 1-sheet describing our offering at trade shows. At the time, I was really concerned about the sheet looking polished and professional. I opted to hire a copywriter to make sure I got it right. We spent some time discussing target customers, overall tone of the sales strategy, and the major points that needed to come through loud and clear. I sent over some ideas jotted down quickly — stream of consciousness style. The copywriter put together all the content and sent it back for review. Was it better than the ideas I had started with? Absolutely. Was the message conveyed loud and clear? Definitely. Should I have paid to have it done?
No.
The copywriter did an outstanding job, let me be clear. BUT, the content that I had put together on my own was definitely in the realm of “good enough”. Hers was more polished. Hers was undeniably better. However, for the time and money spent, the version I produced myself would have been perfectly adequate and well received by potential customers.
Not all attempts at doing it myself went so well! I got in the habit of shopping these attempts around to my peers, friends, and family. Often I knew even before talking to them if what I was showing was “good enough”. Their opinions usually mirrored my own without any prompting at all.
When what you’ve built is clearly not “good enough”, you’ve identified a task worth paying for. At an individual task level that may not seem like an earth-shattering lesson, but it has some broad reaching effects. As you build more and more of a quiver of “do yourself” vs “pay for it” tasks, you also build an incredibly accurate data set for budgeting. Tasks you do yourself can be scheduled into your sprint with a high certainty of time required. Tasks you pay for can be budgeted as cash flow items again with a high certainty of time and money required. Your results and your input both become entirely predictable.
There’s an enrichment aspect as well. Of course, trying new things will give you an appreciation for the people that do those things well on a daily basis. Additionally, there’s an overlap factor. As you stretch yourself to do more and more, you build an overlap of expertise in those areas. That overlap naturally changes the way you approach tasks, both tasks you’ve tried, and tasks that are completely outside of your comfort zone.
Each task tried, regardless of whether it’s “good enough”, teaches you a little more about yourself and ultimately about your business.
