Fire, Fire, Fire
April 26, 2009 – 3:45 am | by Matt Ackerson
There’s a phrase I’ve been repeating to myself lately: “Pull the trigger, Pull the trigger.” It may seem an odd thing to be repeating this phrase to oneself, but let me explain (no, I’m not looking to buy or discharge a firearm in the literal sense).
This phrase was derived from the phrase “Ready, Fire, Aim.” If you’re an entrepreneur (especially an internet-based captain of industry) you should already be familiar with this saying. In theory it means, get your product to market ASAP and refine from there. In practice it may mean, for example, “Build the damn website, launch that sucker, market that sh*t, and then go back and start tweaking and do it quick!” Excuse the language.
Recently I’ve had trouble moving from step one (”Build the damn website”) to step two (”launch that sucker”). For instance, though the Scrimple coupon website has been live for a little while now, I have recently spent too much time planning on what would happen rather than taking immediate and individual steps to launch each change as we made it. At the time I was engrossed in the thinking that, well, we’ll get all our “ducks in a row” and then launch the latest changes at once. This turned out to be taking way too long and I found myself losing motivation to continue building and programming behind the scenes.
I realized this the other day while day dreaming in Managing and Leading in Organizations at the Johnson School. Then I began to get quietly very excited, I felt a rush of adrenaline when thinking about, “What if I just launched the damn local business directory listings on the site? Granted, it would be far from complete or perfect, but the fact that I would be making that single step in the development process public would push me to work harder to rapidly improve it.”
That is what I am doing right now, the database is unpacking the business listings file up as I type this. Forget waiting until it’s a little more perfect, forget all that. I’m pulling the trigger this time. We have readied and aimed enough, now it’s all about rapid fire web development and agile marketing action:
Fire, Fire, Fire.
I’m finally understanding the importance of this and I hope you will as well in your own projects and business endeavors.
