Asher's Blog

One of the earliest lessons I learned after leaving university and spending a few years building a business was that many questions cannot be answered in advance.

You can read; you can plan. You can seek counsel from people who have travelled a similar road. You can study the market, examine the risks and prepare as carefully as possible. All of those things matter. Yet there comes a point when thought stops producing new information. The next answer is available only through action.

This is why, when people approach me with an endless list of questions about an idea, I often give them a simple response: start.

How do you know whether the business will work? Start testing it. How do you know whether people will pay for the product? Ask them to pay.

How do you know whether you can lead? Accept responsibility for leading something.

How do you know whether a decision is right? Make the smallest responsible version of it, observe what happens and learn.

You do not know until you start because action reveals information that imagination cannot supply. It reveals the market, the work and, perhaps most importantly, you.

Some knowledge exists only on the other side of action

Aristotle understood this more than two thousand years ago. In Nicomachean Ethics, he wrote, “For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them.” He used the examples of builders becoming builders by building and musicians becoming musicians by playing.

There is a kind of knowledge that can be transferred through explanation. Someone can teach you accounting principles, show you how a sales process works or describe the responsibilities of leadership. But there is another kind of knowledge that must be embodied. You acquire it through judgment, repetition, mistakes, feedback and adjustment.

You can study swimming for years without learning what your body does when water surrounds it. You can read every respected book on management without knowing how you will respond when a good employee disappoints you, when two colleagues are in conflict or when the team needs an answer you do not yet have. You can prepare a beautiful business plan without knowing whether a customer will remove money from their account and give it to you.

Reality completes the lesson. The problem is that many people want the certainty that normally comes after experience before they permit themselves to begin. They want to know that the business will succeed, that the decision will be correct and that they will be good at the work. Since nobody can provide that guarantee, they remain in preparation. Preparation is valuable until it becomes a respectable name for fear.

Questions can become a hiding place

Curiosity is a strength. Serious people should ask questions before committing time, money or trust. However, questions can also become a way of postponing exposure.

Sometimes the person asking the twentieth question does not need another answer. They want relief from uncertainty. They hope that enough information will eliminate the possibility of embarrassment, rejection or loss. But no amount of research can remove all uncertainty from a new venture, career or season of life.

The relevant question is not, “Can I know everything before I begin?” You cannot. The better questions are:

• What must I know before taking the first step?
• What would be learned by taking that step?
• How can I make the first experiment small enough to survive if I am wrong? – I remember telling myself that the worst case scenario when I started my business would be to move back to my parents’. I was okay with that, so I started. I was 22, and thankfully, I persevered until it went very well.
• What evidence would tell me to continue, change direction or stop?

These questions turn anxiety into design. They do not deny uncertainty; they give you a way to move through it.

Stanford’s design-thinking approach describes a “bias towards action and creation.” The idea is that by making and testing something, we gain information that allows us to improve the original idea. A prototype is therefore not merely a poor version of a finished product. It is an instrument for learning.

You can apply that principle to more than software. A conversation can be a prototype. A weekend project can test your interest in a field. A small paid workshop can test whether people value what you know. Leading one initiative can reveal how you respond to responsibility. You do not need to announce a permanent identity before conducting a useful experiment.

Start does not mean gamble everything

“Just start” can become irresponsible advice if it is separated from wisdom. Not every decision should be made quickly. You should not treat marriage, medical care, large debt, legal obligations or an irreversible transfer of capital as casual experiments. Action teaches, but some lessons can be unnecessarily expensive. Learn from other people’s experience where possible, and protect yourself from consequences that could destroy your ability to continue.

Jeff Bezos offered a useful framework in Amazon’s shareholder letters. He described some decisions as one-way doors: consequential choices that are difficult or impossible to reverse. Others are two-way doors: if the decision does not work, you can return and try another path. His argument was that reversible decisions should usually be made with less analysis and greater speed, while irreversible decisions deserve more care.

This distinction removes two common errors. The first is treating every choice as though it will determine the rest of your life, which produces paralysis. The second is treating a genuinely consequential choice as though failure carries no cost, which produces recklessness.

Before acting, ask whether the door opens both ways. If it does, move with reasonable speed. If it does not, slow down, seek counsel, examine the downside and make sure the risk is proportionate.

Starting wisely often means reducing the size of the first bet. Do not build the complete product before speaking to customers. Do not resign from a good job merely to prove that you are courageous when you could test the idea responsibly alongside it. Do not borrow an amount that would ruin your family in order to validate demand. Do not hire a large team before understanding what the team must repeatedly deliver.

Start, but start in a way that allows you to learn again tomorrow.

Business teaches through contact with reality

Before starting a business, it is easy to imagine that the main challenge will be producing a good idea. Once you begin, you discover that an idea is only the opening sentence.

You must find customers, understand what they genuinely need, persuade them to trust you, price the product, deliver consistently, collect payment, manage cash, hire people, comply with regulations and continue adapting while conditions change. Each answer exposes another question.

You also discover that customers do not always behave as they said they would. A person may praise a product enthusiastically but refuse to pay for it. A feature that appeared essential during an interview may remain unused after launch. A small improvement that nobody on the team considered exciting may solve the customer’s most painful problem.

This is why action is so clarifying. The market does not respond to how beautifully you imagined the business. It responds to what you actually provide.

Paul Graham has written that startups should “make something people want.” The only reliable way to discover whether you are doing that is to place something in front of people and observe their behaviour. Compliments are pleasant; usage, retention and payment are stronger evidence.

Starting gives your thinking something solid to work with. Instead of debating abstract possibilities, you can ask why three customers returned, why seven left, why one channel produced stronger leads or why the product takes too long to deliver. You are no longer guessing in an empty room. Reality has entered the conversation.

Leadership is discovered under responsibility

People sometimes ask themselves whether they would be good leaders. They examine their personality, compare themselves with famous founders and conclude that they do not possess the confidence, intelligence or charisma required.

Perhaps you do not have the qualities of Elon Musk. That is not a useful standard. You are not being asked to become another person before you begin. You are being asked to take responsibility for the opportunity in front of you and become more capable through the experience.

You discover your leadership when plans fail, when people misunderstand you and when you must choose between what is easy and what is right. You learn whether you communicate clearly only after somebody acts on your instruction and produces a result different from what you intended. You learn whether you can receive feedback when a person challenges your decision. You learn whether you can develop people when a talented but inexperienced colleague needs patience and standards at the same time.

You may discover strengths you did not know you possessed. You may also discover impatience, avoidance, insecurity or a need for control. Both discoveries are gifts if you are humble enough to use them.

Leadership is not proven by never making a mistake. It is strengthened by facing the effect of your decisions, accepting responsibility, making the necessary correction and building a better system.

Pause—but pause to learn

Action without reflection can produce activity without development. After starting, you must learn how to pause.

The pause is not an escape from the work. It is where experience becomes wisdom.

Ask yourself:

1. What did I believe would happen?
2. What actually happened?
3. Which part of the result was within my control?
4. What did I do well that should be repeated?
5. What did I do poorly that must change?
6. What did this experience reveal about the problem?
7. What did it reveal about me?
8. What is the next responsible experiment?

Be factual. Do not use reflection as an opportunity to insult yourself, and do not use self-compassion as an excuse to avoid responsibility. You can say, “I made a poor decision,” without saying, “I am permanently incapable of making good decisions.” You can acknowledge that circumstances were difficult while still asking what you could have handled better.

Humility is essential because experience does not automatically make a person wise. Some people live through the same lesson many times but protect themselves from its meaning. They blame the market, the team, their parents, their employer or the government for every result. External factors can be real and powerful, but growth begins when you identify the part that is yours to improve. Do not merely have an experience. Study it.

You are not required to be good at the beginning

Many people delay starting because they do not want to be seen while they are still learning. They compare their first attempt with another person’s mature work and decide that they lack talent.

This is unfair to both people. You are comparing your visible beginning with the product of somebody else’s invisible repetitions.

The first presentation may be awkward. The first article may not express the idea as clearly as you imagined it. The first sales conversation may end too quickly. The first person you manage may expose gaps in your emotional maturity. The first product may solve the wrong part of the problem.

That is not evidence that you should never do the work. It is evidence that you have reached the stage at which practice can begin.

The permission to be a beginner is not permission to remain careless. Prepare seriously, listen closely and improve deliberately. But do not demand mastery as the entrance fee for practice. Mastery is usually the result of practice.

When you start, you replace vague insecurity with specific gaps. “I am not good enough” becomes “I need to improve how I explain the value,” or “I need stronger financial controls,” or “I need to listen before I respond.” A specific weakness can be trained. A vague verdict merely creates shame.

Figuring yourself out is a lifelong process

Another mistake is believing that there is one final version of yourself hidden somewhere, waiting to be discovered. We talk about “finding yourself” as though the task can be completed once and permanently filed away.

I do not think human life works like that. You will meet different versions of yourself in different seasons. The person you are in your twenties is encountering adulthood, independence and ambition in a particular way. In your thirties or forties, responsibility, marriage, children, leadership, health or disappointment may reveal another part of you. In your fifties, seventies or nineties, time will ask different questions and offer different forms of strength.

You do not figure yourself out in one day because you have not yet lived every context that will reveal you. Courage in one season may become patience in another. The ambition that helped you build may later need to coexist with the wisdom to release control. The energy that once compensated for weak systems may eventually have to become discipline, delegation and judgment.

Self-knowledge is not a destination you reach; it is a relationship you maintain with truth.

This should not make you anxious. It should give you permission to embrace the version of yourself that exists now. Learn how this version thinks, responds, loves, works and avoids discomfort. Develop its strengths. Confront its weaknesses. Make it the best and most faithful version available in this season.

Do not postpone living until you believe you have completely understood yourself. Action is part of how that understanding arrives.

Do not let comparison define the experiment

Famous people can inspire us, but they can also distort the scale at which we judge our beginnings. If your first business is not a global technology company, you may assume it is insignificant. If your first leadership opportunity involves only three people, you may think it cannot reveal anything meaningful.

But your present assignment is not an audition for somebody else’s life. The small team can teach you communication, accountability and trust. The local customer can teach you how value is created. The modest project can teach you whether you enjoy the work enough to deepen your competence. The first ten users can expose assumptions that would become expensive at ten thousand users.

Start where you are, with what you have, at a scale you can manage responsibly. Great ambition is compatible with a modest first experiment. In fact, the larger the vision, the more valuable early learning becomes.

Your objective is not to imitate the visible habits of a celebrated person. It is to discover the principles that apply to your context and develop the capabilities your own assignment requires.

A practical way to begin

If you have been thinking about something for too long, use this simple process.

First, write the question clearly. “Will this work?” is too broad. Ask whether a specific group of people will pay a specific amount for a specific solution, or whether you can sustain a particular activity for a defined period.

Second, identify the dangerous assumptions. What must be true for the idea to work? Which assumption, if false, would invalidate the entire plan?

Third, design the smallest credible test. Speak to prospective users. Build a simple prototype. Offer the service manually. Lead a short project. Take one class. Produce one piece of work. The test should be real enough to generate honest evidence.

Fourth, define your boundaries. Decide how much time, money and reputation you can responsibly risk. Protect your family, health, legal obligations and essential financial commitments.

Fifth, set a review point. Decide when you will pause and what evidence you will examine. Without a review point, persistence can become drift.

Sixth, act. Put the conversation on the calendar. Send the proposal. Show the prototype. Apply for the role. Publish the work. Action must eventually leave your notebook.

Seventh, learn and repeat. Keep what worked, change what did not and make the next experiment more intelligent. This cycle—act, observe, reflect and adjust—is how uncertainty becomes knowledge.

Start with God, but do not remain motionless

For me, starting does not mean excluding God from the process. It means refusing to use spirituality as another form of avoidance.

Pray. Seek wisdom. Examine your motives. Listen to the Holy Spirit. Receive counsel from people with character and relevant experience. Then take the responsible step available to you.

Faith is not the absence of thought, but neither is it endless analysis. There are moments when the path becomes clearer only as you walk. Proverbs 16:9 says, “A man’s heart devises his way: but the Lord directs his steps.” Direction is experienced in steps.

You may not receive a complete map. You may receive enough light for the next decision. Move with humility, remain teachable and give God room to correct your direction without interpreting every correction as defeat.

Sometimes the closed door is information. Sometimes the mistake exposes a weakness that must be healed. Sometimes the first version fails because it was preparation for a better one. The important thing is to remain close enough to God, honest enough with yourself and attentive enough to reality that the journey can teach you.

You become by doing

You cannot answer every question about your future self from your present position.

You do not yet know precisely how you will lead under pressure, build through uncertainty, respond to success, recover from failure or change as you grow older. You will discover those answers by living, choosing, reflecting and choosing again.

So embrace the version of yourself that exists today. Do not despise it because it is unfinished. Every living person is unfinished.

Take the best knowledge you have. Assess the real risk. Distinguish the one-way door from the two-way door. Make the reversible decision. Run the small experiment. Let the customer respond. Let responsibility reveal you. Pause, learn and return wiser.

You do not have to figure out your entire life before you begin. In many parts of life, beginning is how you figure it out.

References and further reading

• Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Book II.
• Bernard Roth, The Achievement Habit: Stop Wishing, Start Doing, and Take Command of Your Life. See Stanford’s discussion of his bias towards action.
• Stanford University, A Design Thinking Process.
• Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s 2015 Letter to Shareholders, on one-way and two-way doors.
• Paul Graham, “How to Start a Startup”.
• Proverbs 16:9.