You know those people who won’t show their creation to others until they think it’s perfect? I am the opposite.

One morning I woke up and had an urge to buy a green screen and record Tribal News. So, I did. The first episode looked ok-ish and we had a lot of typos in that video. The same with News.tribalmastermind.com portal. It took me 45 minutes to launch it and our developers literally couldn’t figure this out within 2 months (even though they can code in PHP, edit CSS and do other IT magic much better than me).

People often call me out on not checking my spelling. They often comment under my posts to correct me. That’s from Facebook:

and this one is from YouTube:

One of my friends often sends me back spelling corrections of my texts and adds that: “native speakers won’t find this text natural” etc.

I genuinely appreciate feedback from my friends as I follow the Japanese concept of Kaizen (改善), meaning constant improvement. I always look for ways to improve my life and business. In case of spelling mistakes, there are a few things I could do as a business owner (besides the fact that I’m already educating myself every day) – one is to always use Grammarly, another one is to hire a person to spell check my content…

I won’t do that however because everything I do is a work in progress.

It’s easy for me to launch and bootstrap a new portal fast (in an hour or so), see how it works, and develop on the idea further (or not). It’s very hard for me to plan how to do things for a long time and publish perfected ready products.

Writing, coding websites and recording videos makes it literally easier for me to organize all information flowing through my brain. I need to put my ideas out there (in one form or another) to get some clarity on what I’m actually trying to communicate. Often times, I don’t even know what I’m trying to achieve. I then simply put some video/website or project together and the idea gets clarified in my head.

I also need a lot of live feedback from users. I’m naturally an extrovert and working in front of a computer doesn’t help. Getting live feedback, comments and observing users’ traction and satisfaction is what drives me to develop my ideas further.

One of the examples was when I decided to write the book “How To Start A Digital Marketing Agency” and had offered it on a pre-order before I’ve written the first chapter. A lot of people pre-ordered this book and the money coming in from this project was a proof of concept to me. I also got tons of feedback from readers who’ve been commenting on what they like & dislike about the book. This instant feedback is important to me and makes me feel like my creations are alive and that there are real people using them. This also means more collaboration – I feel like I work on those projects with more people and sometimes I love playing in a sandbox with other kids. Besides, the social pressure of having something already launched is moderately edgy. Being on the edge makes me feel alive and unfortunately doing computer work feels the opposite.

I like starting in the middle and I am not a conscientious person. That’s my natural flow and this is how I work better. However, there is also the harsh reality of business and life that I need to face. Here is how I, personally, find the balance and integrity between my emotions and rationality:

1. I shouldn’t limit my natural flow as working in line with it provides me with a vast capacity of (creative) energy and other non-tangible mental resources (such as satisfaction from work). I should follow this flow to keep being creative, happy and productive
2. I need to be very careful around the spaces where a conscientious approach is crucial. This means:
3. Hiring conscientious people who understand that I’m the opposite of them – they shouldn’t bug me with details but they should take care of them themselves (and they should do it often). That’s necessary for the business because potential and current clients feel safe and trust your company when everything from marketing, through customer onboarding, all the way to the after purchase support appear congruent, stable and predictable. Since the last time I had to let some people go in my company, I’ve learned one thing: I need to clearly communicate to them that I am not conscientious, I don’t check details, I don’t like checking on people’ progress and I give them a lot of freedom within the company. This, however, doesn’t mean that I don’t see the end result. Quite the opposite – I see their impact on the business on the macro scale and I let them go when it’s not positive. (This is one of the reasons why I have so much success with working with people on the commission and why hiring on an hourly payroll is a tough challenge for me.) They also need to understand that every now and then I lock my self off in a shed and I’m not available for any communication (creative work in progress). As much as they find this annoying, those differences between our personalities are the key reason that I’m hiring them – they complement my disabilities (and I complement theirs).
4. I need to consciously abuse my mental capacity to some extent and force myself to be conscientious when it’s absolutely crucial ex. managing my transfers, managing my Facebook & Google Ads, analyzing conversion rates within my funnels (and optimizing it). Those kinds of tasks are extremally draining to me but I minimized them to the absolute minimum.

Now what’s important is that this is me and you’re (most likely) different. Identify areas of your natural flow and decide how you’re going to cope with those that you lack.