Down The Rabbit Hole…

It’s been way too long since my last post…Why? Was I seduced by the Dark Side? Kidnapped by pirates?

No! Worse! I got in my way!

I started working on developing my product. It seemed to go fine. Then the side issues started to crop up.

Even though I was still working on the outline and plan, not even content yet, I started to think ahead about how to deliver it, as if it really mattered at the point.

I didn’t even have the product yet, but I was still concerned about delivering my someday-product.

That lead to “The Better Idea”

This really grabbed my attention. It was a way of delivering products and bonuses that had marketing abilities built in.

It was great! I loved it. It was something I wanted so of course everyone else in the world would want it, too. That is how it works, right? 🙂

I wasn’t 100% sure it would work the way I wanted so I needed a prototype as a proof of concept.

But first, I needed to learn this, and that, and this other thing…and so on.

When a Strength becomes a Weakness

It was a bit complex and needed to be simple to use, but that’s what I do. I’m a ‘systems’ guy. I’m a systems engineer by training and with many years of experience. I produce systems that work together and I make them easy to use and maintain.

I became obsessed with it. I thought about it all the time. I wanted to work on it all the time. I ignored everything else I possibly could. Even things I knew I should be doing.

Things like keeping up with my blogging, list building, and following the efforts of my fellow Partnership to Success students.

That pesky Reality thing happened

I have that product about 80% of the product done. In developer terms, that means it’s about half finished.

This is a good product. I like it. I think it will do well when I release it.

But it’s not the right product for me now.

No matter how much I try to cover, when it gets released, there will be questions.

Right now there’s just me, and I’m not even 100% available because this is still my side gig. I still need my day job to pay the bills.

I would not be able to properly support my customers at this time.

Because of that, I’m putting this aside until I can. Which is painful because I really like this (did I mention that before?)

Third time’s the charm

I have my new product underway now. This is more the type of thing I should be doing at this stage. Useful, but not so grand as the other one.

Randy, one of the P2S mentors, thinks it’s good. And he had some great ideas for it as well.

So that’s my main effort now and it’s coming along nicely.

Lessons learned…

If you’re trying to model how someone does something, then model them. Don’t try to ‘improve’ it until you’ve successfully done it. You’re modeling them for a reason, right?

Plan you week in advance, then follow it. Put in all the things you should do, not just the ones you want to do.

Be realistic and know your limits. You can work on removing them but you need to balance now vs. then to determine where your efforts need to go.

What issues have stopped you in the past? How did you overcome them?