Creep, dont leap

  
Recently I was meeting with one of the great Atlanta entrepreneurs, and personal friend and mentor, Charles Brewer, and as always I was trying to soak up as much of his knowledge as I could. The way he built MindSpring, by starting with values before he even had an idea for what the company would be, is as inspiring a startup story as I’ve ever heard.

Charles was talking to another entrepreneur we were having lunch with and he was being asked about advice on a particular endeavor. Then he said, “I always prefer to find a way to try something in a way that lets me vet the idea before I go all in on it. Creep, don’t leap.”

I’m a huge fan of solid, rhyming advice. ;)

The concept of creep, don’t leap, is something that I think a lot of new entrepreneurs should embrace. Some examples of what this might mean:

– You want to start a bakery because you love baking, but maybe you won’t love running a bakery. Get a six month job managing a bakery. Then, if you like that, try a pop-up bakery in your local park on weekends. 

– Your killer idea is to create a software product to help nonprofits with their marketing. Figure out what your MVP (minimum viable product) is and how much of that you can do manually – before you actually build the software product – and do that for a few nonprofits. See if there really is a need there, and if you’re capable of solving their problems.

– You want to start an event photography business. Decide that you’re going to do X shoots over the next six months, in your free time, and you want to make $Y doing it. Prove to yourself that you can go out and get the clients, and do the work, before pulling the trigger. Maybe you just like taking photos but the act of finding clients, dealing with clients, invoicing clients, etc., is kind of a bummer for you.

Now don’t get me wrong, once you decide you’re in, you need to be ALL IN. I was forced to be all in with my first company, but that ended up being the best thing that ever happened to us. That’s typically the first advice I give to anyone considering starting a company, be ALL IN or don’t do it. But if there is a way to creep, don’t leap, that might be the best approach before jumping into the deep end.