Making money takes practice like playing the piano takes practice

http://37signals.com/svn/posts/1985-making-money-takes-practice-like-playing-the-piano-takes-practice

by iisbum • 17 years ago

50 19 17 years ago

Timothee• 17 years ago

I asked the same thing on the blog, but would be interested to know what the HN community thinks.

Jason and other speakers at Startup School (like Paul Buchheit for example) talked about how they were already building and selling things to their friends growing up.

I did none of that and I was wondering if that's something that's part of one's character, or if that's something that can come later.

Also, I'm thinking one's environment (parents in particular) might influence you in that direction.

I sometimes feel that I grew up in a well-enough family that I didn't need to work for pocket money, but not entrepreneurial enough that I would be inspired. But it might just be my character then…

alttab• 17 years ago

Entrepreneurial success is somehow related to character. There are many books/blogs defining, or trying to figure those things out.

I distributed a game called "Button Masher" on the TI-83 to class mates in the 8th grade. You hook up two calculators.... and mash the "Up" button as fast as you can to see your bar reach the top. I didn't make any money because I didn't charge, but the thought crossed my mind.

I think it comes down to a couple of things, whether they are all/some sufficient/necessary probably depends on experience or personal anecdotes. That said, here is what brought me to it:

1) The unbound desire to create something without a rubric.

2) The internal joy one receives when that created something makes someone's day.

3) The motivation to act when you see something and say "I could totally do that better."

So to me, 'making money' comes down to: wanting to prove to myself + desire to help others = profit.

edit: formatting.

apsurd• 17 years ago

I did none of that and I was wondering if that's something that's part of one's character, or if that's something that can come later.

Character is built. Therefore I do not get why there is an "or" in that sentence. It is a mistake to think you are born with character, or skill, or talent, or gifts, or anything: even if you are. In the same way I will always believe I am in control of my life, even if I may really not be.

Your post suggests that you are looking for reasons why ... lets call them what they are: excuses. If you want to be an entrepreneur, you'll need to sell stuff. Whether you've done it for the past 1000 years or have never looked into another persons eyes for more than 2 seconds, you just have to do it. No more excuses. Stop reasoning, start doing.

pchristensen• 17 years ago

I had some entrepreneurial drive as a kid (selling origami, candy arbitrage, etc) but got in trouble and unfortunately the "Don't fight the system" message was louder than the entrepreneurial urge. I still worked hard mowing lawns, summer jobs, etc. What was missing was the idea that I could create arbitrarily large amounts of value for it and charge accordingly.

ellyagg• 17 years ago

Ahh, candy arbitrage. That was a great opportunity when I was a HS freshman. I had resellers and contracts and everything...until the stupid administration called me into the office.

timcederman• 17 years ago

I felt like I hadn't done anything entrepreneurial in my youth, but in retrospect selling "spider removal services" as a 7 year old, and selling membership to my BBS as a 15 year old (amongst other things) fit in the same genre of what many entrepreneurs talk of doing themselves.

tomerico• 17 years ago

So, on one hand, you wouldn't know how to make money before you gained experiance selling stuff, and the more experiance the better. On the other hand, you should gain experiannce by bootstrapping and putting your money at risk, instead of the investors?

Am I the only one this doesn't make sense to?

cglee• 17 years ago

What's contradictory? Sell stuff, and try to do it on your own.

mechanical_fish• 17 years ago

The whole point of bootstrapping is that you risk almost nothing before you have some positive feedback that suggests you can risk more. You bet a nickel that you can sell something for a dime. Then you bet a dime that you can sell something for a quarter. Repeat until you're Bill Gates and you're betting a football team that you can make a lot of money leasing the Eiffel Tower.

If you lose at any point, you can take comfort in the fact that you haven't lost more than you know how to make.

patio11• 17 years ago

I was never in the hole more than $60 plus my own time. Seriously, some days I think being a computer programmer is too darn easy to be legal. We bang away on a keyboard, whammo, value ex nihilo.

pohl• 17 years ago

The author's point is that the true nature of practice is that you get good at whatever you repeat. This is because practice uses the brain's built-in automation mechanism. If you spend all of your time procrastinating, for example, it becomes automatic...because you have practiced it a lot, even if this was not your conscious intent. (That is my example, not the author's.)

Taking outside money, the author claims, encourages you to practice spending money. This is at odds with what the author suggests that you should practice instead: making it.

sdh• 17 years ago

I think this is a big part of why so many VC funded "we'll figure out how to make money later" startups fail. The runway encourages a weakness in the DNA of their company. If primitive man had a refrigerator full of food back at the cave, he would never have learned to hunt.

charlesju• 17 years ago

As a bootstrapped company I understand what you mean, but that doesn't mean companies like that cannot succeed. ie. Google, Yahoo, Facebook, Digg, etc.

ryanwaggoner• 17 years ago

According to Zuckerberg, Facebook already had thousands or hundreds of thousands of users when they took funding, and they were funding growth with ad revenue.

mattjung• 17 years ago

Making money definitely doesn't take the same amount of practice as piano playing. You won't find a single world-class piano player who started playing when he was 20 years old. But you will find many successful entrepreneurs that started to get interest in making money in their twenties or even later. The main reason is that luck alone can make you rich, but will never transform you into a good piano player. It may help you in creating a business if money is your primary interest (e.g. Friedrich Flick), but it will even help you more when you do something that's fun (e.g. Steve Jobs).

Andys• 17 years ago

Maybe this is because sitting around practicing a piano for 8 hours a day is acceptable for 6 to 18 year olds but no 20+ year old is able to do this.

hyperbovine• 17 years ago

Almost nobody practices 8 hours a day, even among world class musicians. (Liszt and his cadre were some notable exceptions.) If you believe Gladwell averaging three a day from ages 10-20 is enough to make a prodigy.

Making money takes practice like playing the piano takes practice

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