Generally, we have so many options as to what we can spend our attention on that we end up being completely scatter-brained. There are so many things we can do that generally we just do nothing. Making a choice and a commitment to focus on one thing is often a step too far for us. Infinite choice has a paralysing effect on our minds; it’s easier to decide to do nothing than to pick from an infinite number of choices.
People tend to get very little work done as a result of all this, and thus never truly fulfil themselves. I meet a lot of people who – paralysed by the limitless opportunities for work that our globalised, digitised world provides – have no idea what to do with their lives.
There used to be a time when most decisions were made for you – you’d work in the local mill or factory and live the same life as your parents and pretty well everyone else around you. But now, the choice of what to do with your life is completely up to you.
In this book, I want to show what can happen in just 48 hours of undivided attention. By focusing all of my energy on working on one simple idea for two days, it’s amazing how much ground can be covered. If we remove the constant interruptions of phone calls and Facebook updates from our lives, we can begin to work on tasks more deeply, enjoy our lives more, and have experiences with the people around us that are more meaningful.
The 48-Hour Start-Up is an experiment in focus. If you just devote all of your energy to a task that has a simple and clearly defined goal, you can achieve in days what you previously thought would take years. If, instead, you try starting a business in the usual way, with all of the distractions that our modern lives bring, it may well indeed take you years.
PIZZA PILGRIMS
How to make a living out of doing something that you love
Almost everyone loves pizzas, so to make a living out of selling them is probably a dream that many people have. But given that there are probably more pizzerias in the world than any other type of restaurant, it surely takes a bit of guts to set out to start another one in what is undoubtedly a fairly crowded market.
Undeterred, brothers James and Thom Elliot decided to go on their ‘pizza pilgrimage’ to Italy, buying a vintage Ape van and driving it back to London. They picked up recipes and inspiration for their restaurant along the way and now, several years later, find themselves running a small chain of pizzerias in London that has developed something of a cult following.
Their story certainly sounds romantic, and they’re definitely a couple of guys who are doing something that they love. But I know for sure that starting a business, especially a restaurant business, isn’t all romance and fun. When I caught up with them recently for our podcast show, they reflected on conversations they have had with some of their friends – friends who are maybe working in corporate jobs in their thirties and bored out of their minds.
‘Spending your twenties finding something that you love and are awesome at is the key.’ But they warn that you shouldn’t trick yourself into thinking that starting a business is going to be amazing every day and that you’re going to skip off to work each morning as though you’re in a Disney movie. What they can guarantee is that every day is going to be different. If you have a bad day, there’s nothing to say that the next day isn’t going to be amazing.
‘Don’t start a company because you want to have an easy life or because you think every day is going to be the best day of your life.’ Running your own business is an amazingly varied and totally at-your-control-type lifestyle, and that’s what these guys love about it.
‘When you work for a big company, it’s kind of like having emotional training wheels on – your best day is kinda great and your worst day is kinda bad. But when you work for yourself, your best day is kind of Shawshank Redemption rain-in-your-face amazing and the worst day is, well, really tough.’
On the topic of whether it helps to have a business partner with whom to share all of this emotional turmoil, they propose that it definitely does. ‘We’ve found that having a business partner has made the highs even higher and has meant that when we do have lows there’s someone there to get you through.’
You can listen to the full interview on the 48-Hour Start-Up podcast show at 48hourstartup.org.
CHAPTER 2
‘How can I possibly come up with a good idea? Surely all the good ones are already taken?’
Every business begins with an idea, so the first step in the 48-hour start-up process is to come up with one. Usually, this is where people fall into a great black hole of endless dreaming and scheming. Some people can’t come up with any ideas at all and some come up with too many and can’t decide which one to pick.
One of my all-time favourite quotes comes from an American called Charles H. Duell. All the way back in 1899, when he was the US Commissioner of Patents, he proposed that the Patent Office’s days were numbered and that it ought soon to face closure. He proclaimed that ‘Everything that can be invented, has been invented.’
Of course, more than 100 years later, his comment strikes us as farcical. When we think of all of the innovation and change that has happened in the century that followed his proclamation, it is clear that he was very much wide of the mark. But the funny thing is that this is exactly the type of comment I hear people making almost every day.
If you watch programmes like Dragons’ Den (or the US version, Shark Tank), you can easily be given the impression that the qualification for a good idea is that it is unique, that it is hitherto something that didn’t exist in the world. On these TV shows, eccentric and hopeful inventors unpack a suitcase inside which they have carried some kind of bizarre contraption – like a special mop that cleans underneath the fridge or a gadget for de-icing your car windscreen in seconds.
Of course, these spectacles make for great television, but they don’t actually tell the full story of what is and isn’t a good idea. It is true that these hapless innovators are often quite correct when they say that their creation ‘has never been done before’ – but, sadly, there’s often a reason for why that’s the case!
What I have found in my career is that your idea doesn’t necessarily need to be high-tech – although, of course, a lot of brilliant ideas are. A good idea definitely doesn’t have to reinvent the wheel. What my experiences show is that it’s possible to make something extraordinary out of something as ordinary as jam, beer or coffee.
USP IS DEAD
TV entrepreneurship shows probably also give you the impression that good ideas ought to have a patent. They bleat on about how important it is to ‘protect’ your idea. ‘If you don’t have a patent, someone else can just come along and steal your idea!’ the ‘dragons’ shout as they shoot down another under-prepared entrepreneur.
In the real world, almost no businesses have a patent. Their ideas simply aren’t innovative enough to be granted any kind of special protection from competition. And even those who do hold these certificates of monopoly over their ideas aren’t really protected from much in the real world. If their idea is any good, someone will come along and find a way around their patent or maybe even come up with a better solution to the problem altogether.
So if I’m telling you that there is no need for your idea to be unique, surely this flies in the face of the conventional business mantra that every business must have a ‘unique selling point’. I don’t know about you but this principle was drilled into my head in business studies as if it were a fact of life – that all businesses only exist because they are doing something ‘unique’.
When you stop to analyse this, you quickly realise that it is ludicrous.