“What’s your secret?”
“Practice.”
That was the conversation in the Gandolf household last week. My wife and I have been WFH for the last 16 months. Her at a multi-billion dollar software company and me at an 8-person startup. Our companies are very different but we’re both able to successfully work from the comfort of our home.
However, we’re not both able to successfully make an overeasy egg.
You see, she has this mastered.
And every time I give it a try, it turns into a broken yolk, fried egg mess.
When our schedule allows, we’re able to eat breakfast together. Toast, avocado (we are millennials afterall), and…
If I’m making it, a fried egg.
If she’s making it, a perfectly, delicately prepared over easy egg.
So I asked, “What’s your secret?” I thought, “it has to be butter.” Or temperature. Timing. Flipping technique?! There has to be a hack.
Nope. She just said, “practice.”
Yes, Allen, yes we are.
In a tech culture obsessed with doing big things fast, it’s easy to be drawn to the latest “growth hack,” the best shortcut, the ways to build “hockey stick growth.” Practice is far less sexy. But practice makes progress.
Last week, The Juice team had a practice of our own. For the first time ever, we let non-employees access the platform. Our colleagues with High Alpha logged in as our VIP users. We wanted to practice.
We let them peruse the platform unprompted and then we gave them several prompts that we felt they would eventually try on their own. We watched and we learned. We learned a lot.
Our team had planned for this to be a three-hour exercise. We left the conference room 6 hours later. Not because the feedback was bad but because we were encouraged by the progress that was possible from this simple practice session.
Generally, the sentiment was incredibly positive which was exciting. The feedback on how we could make the platform better was even more exciting. So, we created a list and this week, our platform is better than it was 7 days ago. Next week, we’ll be better than we are this week. We’re making big, impactful changes in real-time because we practiced.
It was an incredibly energizing day -- the teamwork, the collaboration, and finally sharing the product with the outside world. I posted about the experience on LinkedIn. Our friend Sangram Vajre, Terminus Co-Founder and Evangelist, weighed in with a timely reminder.
And while the old saying goes, “Practice makes perfect,” … maybe it doesn’t. Not at this stage. Maybe not ever?
Practice is about progress. And progress is better than perfection. Perfection implies that you’re done. And we all know software is never “done.”
So, our team is going to continue to practice. Early and often. Over the next four weeks, you’ll get an opportunity to see what we mean. Those that have signed up for early access will login and we’ll learn.
Then, it’s game time. But that doesn’t mean we’ll stop practicing and stop learning.
And at some point, maybe I’ll learn how to practice enough to make a perfect over easy egg.
If you want to see the progress for yourself, sign up now to get early access to the platform. If you want to come practice with us, we’re hiring. You can see the open positions here.
