Global Moxie

Photo by Auntie P.

Launching a new product is like finishing a marathon only to discover that you’ve just arrived at a new starting line. There’s a huge sense of triumph and satisfaction, followed by the grueling realization that a long road stretches ahead.

After thousands of hours of work, I released Big Medium 2.0 last week. Immediately after pushing the button to send out the announcement, I received a gratifying trickle, then a torrent, of e-mail congrats, inquiries and support requests. Even in the midst of the holiday season, when the world had far better things to do than tinker with content management systems, the initial response was reassuring, a terrific gift for my stocking.

It was also a reminder: Even though the code might be complete on my shiny new product, the support and marketing efforts have just begun. Lots of work ahead.

There’s a seductive and popular misconception that a great idea or a great product inevitably translates into success. “Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door,” Emerson famously wrote.^[ 1 ] Alas, tell that to the 4400 holders of patents for mousetraps, most of whom never turned a profit (only about 20 ever became successful).

Just as I’ve finally pushed this boulder up the hill, I see that there are new mountains ahead of me.

Those mousetrap hopefuls sound an awful lot like the 1000-ish content management systems that are out there. This is a noisy marketplace. Even when you do have a better mousetrap for a specific audience, as I believe I do with Big Medium, the product alone doesn’t guarantee success.

Merit isn’t enough. Business success requires a whole new effort quite apart from the software craftsman’s quiet world of code and interface design. For a guy who’s more at ease making stuff than marketing it, this is daunting.

Just as I’ve finally pushed this boulder up the hill, I see that there are new mountains ahead of me. Every creative endeavor runs into this rugged terrain, because here’s the thing: There’s always more work to be done.

Make peace with the hills

As a distance runner, I long ago learned to make peace with hills. The trick is to slow your pace so that you’re still investing the same amount of effort as you did on the flats. You focus on the top of the hill and eventually roll over it, picking up the pace on the other side. It’s all about maintaining steady effort while keeping the destination in mind. Runners can make it over any hill this way, no matter how long or steep.

Steady effort. Focus. Enjoy the downhills.

It’s important to allow yourself a few moments of satisfaction.

The downhills are as important as the climb itself. These are the moments that allow you to regroup your energy, to celebrate your strength before easing back into the hard work of covering the flats and tackling new hills. It may still be the middle of the race, but cresting a hill is a victory in itself, and it’s important to allow yourself a few moments of satisfaction.

This holiday break is giving me a welcome pause to catch my breath and look back on what I’ve accomplished. There aren’t many moments like this in life where you complete a major work, setting aside a big responsibility and moving into a territory that is 100 percent potential.

I’ve been fortunate in life to accomplish a lot of things in a broad range of creative pursuits, but none have been so challenging or engaging as bringing Big Medium 2.0 in for a landing. No matter what happens from a business perspective, the product itself is a huge personal success for me. It’s difficult to describe just how proud I am of it.

No such thing as a finish line

Software, like writing or painting, is never quite done. It’s never perfect. There are always refinements to be made, subtleties to explore, and of course entire features to be added. (I have nearly 200 features on my wish list for consideration for future versions of Big Medium, and the Big Medium faithful send me new ones all the time.)

On top of that, the product itself generates more work to do. As more and more people use Big Medium, the more support requests I have to field. The demands of customer support are reduced a bit by solid documentation and a steadily updated FAQ section, but the e-mail load nevertheless grows along with usage. As someone who’s dedicated to providing personal, detailed responses to my customers, customer support is a hill that will grow to be quite steep.

And of course I have to sell the thing. I’m bootstrapping this launch on a very modest budget. I expect to do some light advertising to very targeted audiences, but you shouldn’t expect to see the genie logo on the sides of buses anytime soon. Mainly, I plan to hit the bricks, talking up Big Medium’s merits to web designers and their clients. (If you want to pitch in with this effort, I’ll have some suggestions on how you can help in the next few days; your ideas are welcome, too!).

Finding the pace

This isn’t a sprint. I’m in this for the long haul. It’s important to find the right pace to cover the hills ahead.

Establishing a disciplined pace has always been more difficult for me in the office than on my runs. Long hours are typically the norm, and weekends tend to evaporate. Other entrepreneurs tell me they struggle with the same thing. I’m convinced, though, that regular hours and a rich life outside of work lead to more creative output and better service overall. So I’m committed to finding a new, more sustainable pace in the new year.

In the meantime, I’m savoring this launch moment before taking a deep breath and plunging ahead from this new starting line into an unknown, exciting and certainly hilly new year. Steady effort. Focus. Enjoy the downhills.

Tags: bigmedium, business, marathon, motivation, software