Show It Rough

Dear friend,

The riddle first, as ever. Your century today, and the subject is a question nobody asks because of what the answer might be.

Two makers start the selfsame thing,
Both dream in private what it brings.
One waits until it's fit to show,
One shows it rough and asks to know.
By spring, one sells, one's still not done.
Which one was frightened? Tell me. Which one?

Hold your answer. Story time.

The Story

Two makers, same trade, same month, both building a new thing to sell. And the craft, all together now, was equally good.

The first was thorough. He would show it when it was ready, and he meant that honestly: showing people something half-finished struck him as unprofessional, and there was a version of this in his head that was going to be extremely good.

Nine months. Evenings and Sundays, and every one of those weeks he made decisions about what a customer would want, using the only material he had, which was his own opinion in an empty room. He asked his wife, who said it sounded lovely, and a friend in the trade, who said it sounded clever, and both of them were being kind rather than useful, as everyone always is when asked to admire something.

He launched in October and sold three.

The autopsy took a fortnight and it was brutal in the ordinary way. The part he had spent four months perfecting was the part nobody cared about. The price was wrong in a direction he had never considered. And the thing that stopped people buying was an objection so simple that any one of a dozen customers would have said it out loud in week two, had anybody asked them.

He was not lazy and he was not stupid. He was frightened, which is a far more expensive condition, and the shape of the fear is worth naming exactly: while the thing was unlaunched, it could still be brilliant. Every week he spent polishing was a week he got to keep believing that. Showing it meant finding out, and finding out is the one thing that can take the possibility away.

The second maker showed hers in week two, embarrassingly rough, to twelve people who actually buy things of that sort.

She did not ask what they thought of it, because what do you think is a request for reassurance wearing a lab coat, and it works: people are kind, and their kindness will cost you nine months. She asked the questions that could hurt. What would stop you buying this today? What are you using instead, and what does that cost you? What would you have to stop doing to make room for this? And then the one that ends all argument: it will be forty pounds, would you like one now.

Three said yes and paid, on conditions. Those conditions rewrote her plan in an afternoon, which is a thing worth sitting with: an afternoon, against his nine months. Two said something that stung and turned out to be the objection at the centre of the whole idea. Seven, quite politely, were not interested at all, and that told her which sort of buyer she had been imagining rather than observing.

She then spent nine months building it too. The difference was not speed. Every week of her nine months was aimed at something a real person had actually said, and by the end of it she had a product with twelve people already waiting for it, three of whom had paid before the first version existed.

The Lesson, Since You've Earned It

The unshown thing cannot fail, which is exactly what makes it so comfortable to keep working on. Nearly all delay of this sort is misfiled as high standards, by the person doing it, in perfect sincerity. But a standard is a thing you hold against a real judgement, and a work nobody has seen has been held against nothing at all. What is being protected is not the quality. It is the belief.

So the practical rule is dull and unarguable: nobody can tell you the truth about a thing you have not shown them, and every week you spend not showing it is a week of decisions made from guesswork. You are not avoiding a verdict by waiting, you are only postponing it and raising its price, because the same information that costs you an afternoon in week two costs you nine months in October.

Then ask properly, because most feedback is worthless by construction. Do not ask what people think, ask what would stop them; do not ask if they like it, ask what they use now and what it costs them; do not ask whether they would buy it one day, ask them to buy it today. Money is the only answer that cannot be given out of politeness, which is why a deposit taken in week two is worth more than a hundred encouraging conversations, exactly as it was for the fitter with three lines at the bottom of a quote.

And ask buyers, not the people around you. Your family will be kind, your friends in the trade will be clever, and neither is the person who has to part with money on a wet Tuesday. The knife man settled his arguments the same way and for the same reason: you cannot reason your way to what a stranger will do, you can only go and find out, cheaply, before it matters.

Three questions, and be specific rather than generous with yourself:

1. What are you polishing, and who has seen it? Name the last actual buyer who looked at it, and the date. If you cannot name one, or the name is a relative, you have been working from your own imagination for however long it has been, and the length of that period is the size of your risk.
2. What is the question you are avoiding? There is one, and you already know it, and it usually starts with what would stop you. Write it down in the words you would have to say aloud. The reluctance you feel while writing it is the exact measure of how much the answer is worth.
3. What could five people see this week? Not the finished thing: a sketch, a page, a rough version, a description with a price on it. Then ask one of them for money. Whatever happens next is worth more than the next month of work, and it will happen by Friday rather than in October.

The Answer to the Riddle

Which one was frightened?

The one who waited, though he would have told you, honestly, that he was being careful. She was not braver by temperament; she simply arranged to have the bad news early, when it was cheap, in an afternoon, from twelve people who had no reason to spare her feelings. He arranged to have it in October, after nine months, in the form of three sales. It was the same information both times. Only the price of it differed, and the price is set entirely by how long you wait to ask.

The verse:

The thing unshown can still be great,
Which makes it comfortable to wait.
So take it out while it is rough,
And let them tell you soon enough.

Until next time. Go and show the rough thing to five real buyers this week, and ask one of them for money.

P.S. When the sting comes, and it will, notice how quickly the mind sets about explaining why that particular person was not the right sort of customer. Sometimes they are not. But the explanation arrives far too fast to be a judgement, and it is worth writing the objection down verbatim before you start improving on it.

Also in the archive: The Coming Soon Page, What They Did, Not Why and Let Them Try It.