Metrics, metrics metrics. While there’s one metric I can’t get enough of, the rest have been pissing me off for a while now. This growing wave of overreacting to data analysis needs to crest, we may be in a metrics bubble folks. I’ll differentiate between data and metrics. Except for the associated development and storage costs, collecting data is typically a good idea. You can rarely ‘go back in time’ to collect data that you failed to capture in the present.

“We have never had more data than we have now, yet have less predictability than ever.”, Antifragile

While I don’t believe in pure raw talent, I do believe in hustlers and the ability for individuals to succeed. That should be clear in how we’re building Startupify.Me and our focus on people not projects. I touched on the book The User Illusion last week and it’s premise of the powerful role the subconsciousness plays in talented individuals. There’s a reason Wayne Gretzky and Tom Brady can’t explain or document what they do. They’re not privy to it, they have no idea, it isn’t taking place in their consciousness. In the heat of a game, Tom Brady isn’t tracking hundreds of various stats in his head, stressing about them and how they relate. He’s hardly thinking consciously at all. In fact he’s likely worrying about his commute home or that phone call he had with his mom before the game.

Clearly stats, metrics etc play a massive role in modern sports but not for the great athletes in the heat of the battle. Yes athletes review them, see reports and if it’s a contract year, they’ll likely pay more attention but stats are for sportscasters, fantasy sports stars, armchair quarterbacks and team administration. Stats are for the nerds like myself who can’t actually play.

Let’s think about this in reverse. If you forced Tom Brady to hold a set of useless metrics in his head while playing the game, how would that impact his play? Could you negatively impact a great athlete by bombarding him with stats that are irrelevant to on field performance. You want an athlete to do, you want them to act. You may not understand how they do it but who cares? What’s important is that they do it, not that you understand it.

In The Invisible Gorilla they create experiments to do exactly this, have data distract you. An example they use is something as simple as crossing the street. Forcing people to pay attention to the colour of people’s eye coming the other way significantly increases your chance of being hit by a car.

“When you cross the street, you remove data, anything but the essential threat…..how many things one should disregard in order to act.”, Antifragile

Part of the challenge here is that becoming great at something creates an illusion in ourselves that it’s easy. It’s called automaticity, we’re built to make important things automatic. Our brain’s job is to remove data not add it.

“The more processing we can do in our unconscious minds, the better our chances of noticing that saber-toothed tiger lurking in the brush. It also creates a powerfully convincing illusion: a skill, once gained, feels utterly natural”, The Talent Code

It’s great to see others more experienced than myself like Dan Martell and Mike Litt discussing this. I don’t see this as an argument against metrics in anyway. What I’m suggesting is that, especially in the early stage, the Mike’s and Dan’s of our world need to be left alone. They can’t explain what they’re up to and that’s ok. Let them find the business and grow it, the metrics will come. In fact the metrics exist, they’re just locked away in Mike and Dan’s head right now and they’re changing hourly. In those early days you may just need to trust your gut.

“It’s not that we need to be ‘left alone’ it’s that asking us to talk about metrics is going to mislead an early stage audience into thinking that the metrics we track are the metrics that are important to their business.

My deck at Grow focused on the importance of utilizing gut-instinct driven decisions to get to and leverage the ever-elusive, “Product Market fit”. Cross the chasm, get beyond the crash of ineptitude and identify wiggles of hope by talking to customers on a daily, if not hourly basis.

This infographic titled “Everyone Will Have to Become an Entrepreneur” is awesome! I wish we’d created it as it could likely be our entire landing page for Startupify.Me.

So that’s great, we should all be entrepreneurs, or at the very least be more entrepreneurial, but how? All the successful entrepreneurs are busy telling us to make mistakes, fail early but what the hell does that mean? How can I make mistakes when I’m quitting my job and have a mortgage to pay? Is it really helpful to know that Google failed to create Wave? I can’t afford to spend millions, even thousands, failing.

“There are secrets to our world that only practice can reveal, and no opinion or analysis will ever capture in full”, Antifragile

In Talent Code, Daniel Coyle puts forward a strong case for what he calls deep practice. Only through practice do we build up the neurological circuits to be excellent. Doing that requires that we explicitly spend time working at the edge of our capabilities in ways that would never be tolerated in a corporate setting.

“Struggle is not optional, it’s neurologically required”, Talent Code

Ever wonder why Brazil produces so many great soccer players? The answer isn’t soccer. It’s a smaller, tighter game played with a smaller heavier ball and it’s called futsal. Check out this video with Ronaldinho playing futsal as a kid.

Futsal is a means for young players to practice and log hours and hours in a massively creative format. All of which is building the skills, or the neurological circuits, required to be a great soccer player. They have the freedom to try things at the boundaries of what they’re capable of, and fail. Again, and again and again.

Tor Norretranders puts forward effectively the same argument in The User Illusion. In his case the explicit, deep practice that pro athletes do is aimed at pushing the task into our subconscious. The argument being that our consciousness is the dorky, clumsy cousin of our subconscious. When you first learn to drive, your consciousness is controlling things. You read books, take lessons, everything’s a process. When you’re an F1 driver you’re never thinking clutch in, release gas slightly, etc. (of course F1 likely doesn’t even have a clutch any longer). You can’t be great at anything until your subconscious takes over.

Back to entrepreneurship, if you believe in this practice based approach, where do you actually go to practice? Where are the futsal and gyms for aspiring entrepreneurs? Over the past few months of development of Startupify.Me, we’ve come to refer to it as a flight simulator for entrepreneurship. Our goal is to create a place where you can work together with a group of people on real business problems and you can make mistakes. The goal being for you to work at the edge of your capabilities, make mistakes and work with our program mentors to learn from them and then make more. We allow you to practice more deeply, to stop, to struggle, to make errors, and to learn from them. We allow you to push entrepreneurship into your subconscious.

PS…We start accepting applications for our next cohort next week. You’ll be the first to know since you’re on our email list.

I gave a short talk last year at GWMM titled “How To Quit Your Crappy Job“. It was a tongue in cheek way of pitching Startupify.Me. In the talk I discussed Josh Kaufman’s definition of a successful business:

1. Creates or provides something of value that…(Product Development)
2. Other people want or need. (Marketing)
3. At a price they’re willing to pay, in a way that…(Sales)
4. Satisfies the purchaser’s needs and expectations and…(Value Delivery)
5. Provides the business sufficient revenue to make it worthwhile for the owners to continue operation. (Finance/Operations)

Most jobs allow you to be involved in one, maybe two of the above. Going it alone requires you to deliver and balance all of them. That is a massive leap!

The typical response I get when I pitch Startupify.Me to someone gainfully employed is “I’m scared to sh!$ of quitting my job”. You should be scared and chances are you should keep your job. There are, however, a tiny fraction of potential entrepreneurs currently locked away in decent jobs at great companies. Certainly for us here in Canada, it’s the path set out for us. Get your degree, get the best job you can and work your way up the ladder. Rarely were we offered any path beyond that one.

For those of you in that tiny fraction, fear is good. The goal isn’t to eliminate fear, it’s to leverage it for action. I played high school football with a guy who, before every game just after warm-up, would walk off on his own into the endzone and throw up. He was always one of our best players. People would always want to help him or ask him “are you alright?” but his teammates knew to leave him alone, let him puke, he’ll play great.

For this round of Startupify.Me, we’re selecting a small team of software developers based on how prepared they are to become technical cofounders and play a leadership role in a new business. We’re building a flight simulator for technical businesses to provide you with the opportunity to practice the required skills in real settings, make some mistakes, learn, repeat. The first step will be leaving the cozy confines of employment and learn how to eat what you kill! Contact me directly if you’d like to apply.