🍰 Thin Slice - Birthday Cake Edition

Hola 👋🏻

This week’s thin slice is the birthday edition.  Not its birthday, mine (on Sunday).  Yes, there will be cake (a cheeky little number from M&S which does contain vanilla sprinkles).

This week I’m reflecting on what I’ve learned, and what I’m going to do with what I’ve learned.

This week has been jam packed for me, in a good way.  I’ve taken on the role of facilitating design thinking sessions for school children.  It’s a relatively new venture that’s only in its second year.  And it’s SO much fun.

I’ve worked in tech for the last 26 years (I might have mentioned it one or several hundred times).  And I can say for certainty, there is a lot more to it than lines of code.  In fact I’ve lost count of the amount of times this week where I’ve said that research and testing is to products as water is to the human body (60% in case you were wondering).

Unfortunately, most children coming through school think that tech is coding.  Which means we are losing a sh*t ton of young women who might consider a career in tech for this reason.

Which leads me back to the community interest company I’m working with to run the facilitation.  The aim is to give the children the choice of two briefs, they then take the one they’ve chosen and run it through the design thinking process.

If you know me, you know I love showing people rather than telling them.  This approach works really well with that.  SO much fun.

The thing I love about this approach is that you take a problem, learn more about it, check if it is a problem, then come up with ideas of how to solve it.  The journey of solving it is as important as what the solution is.

In the olden days, when computers were coal fired, products were built by coming up with an idea, and building it.  It rarely solved a problem (other than ones generated by ego).  It was almost never researched or Dog forbid, tested with actual living humans who might use it.

While the newer approach is far from perfect (how did you think I learned to be unperfect??) it’s much better than it was.  It’s also great at getting us to embrace that failing is actually a good thing.

So I think it’s a great skill to get school children to learn.

I’m *still* doing research for the business.  And I’ve been loving the conversations I’ve been having with people to learn more about how they’ve built products.

Themes I’m starting to see around pricing, sales and (unsurprising) research.

But one insight that popped up yesterday at the end of a call really fascinated me.  Largely because I’ve experienced it myself over the last few months but didn’t see the value I could bring to solving it.  Well, until yesterday that is.

When you’re in the idea or go-for-it stage, and you don’t have an Amex Black to build it with, you’re doing things on a frayed shoestring.  Everything that costs money has to have a real value to it.

The thing that really stood out from yesterday’s conversation was about discounts and free products you might want to use to help you build something or run your business.

Which led me to thinking about the value of the free version of the thin slice.  I need it to have value to you.  But I especially need it to have value to you if you’re working with that frayed shoestring.

So here’s my hypothesis.

The free version of the Thin Slice is likely to be aimed at people who are just starting out on their product building journey.  They can’t afford to learn all mistakes the hard and expensive way.  They’re looking for help on the right tools for them to help them get started.  They’re looking for helpful information on how to make good choices that move them forward.  They want to know how much free or discounted actually costs them.  They want to know how to use a small sustainable tech stack.  They want to know the basics to get them started.

So that’s what I’m going to start with.  Want to help me test that hypothesis?  Why not slide into the comments with what you would find helpful.

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I’m sat here writing this on what is supposed to be a day off.  Mainly because I made a commitment to send this out once a week, I ran out of time yesterday and I’m waiting for my groceries to be delivered.

Probably a failure in planning on my part, because I’m trying to be a bit more fluid with my schedule.  I don’t work well when I have things planned down to the nth degree.  I will sit here looking at the thing I’ve told myself I have to do at this time and I go full on teenager and say “I don’t wanna”.

So I’m trying out new ways to get things done that are good for me.  I’ve started to do that a lot more.  Asking “what does good look like?” and actively seeking out small moments of good.  I’ve been learning a lot more about myself in the last 4 months.  Why?  because everything I’ve tried up until now to build a business, has failed.  I’ve literally failed at creating three businesses.

Which is where the bedrock of the Unperfect Method lies.  The 4 Ps of Good.  I’m going to explain the whole thing in more detail, I promise.  And if you come along to the talk I’m doing on Thursday 9th of May, you’ll find out even more (also how I can move from Hamilton lyrics to trance music).

One of the things I’ve learned is that I can’t chase dreams or goals anymore.  They rarely live up to the pedestal that I’ve put them on.  The vision I create in my head, and become so blinkered trying to achieve, rarely work out well.  The two “dream” jobs I had, that were both the two most toxic places I’ve ever worked.

When I mentioned this in a LinkedIn post this week, someone saw red and their comment was very spicy.  The long and short of it was they assumed that because I didn’t like goals, I wasn’t thinking strategically and I wasn’t planning.  Which is further from the truth.

I have a rough idea of the destination, but the journey is as important, if not more so.  If I spend all my life aiming for a goal, and forgetting to have fun along the way, the goal probably won’t be anything like I’ve imagined, I probably won’t recognise how amazing it is and I’ll probably be seriously burned out.

So I’m practicing what I preach with my 4 Ps of Good. Come along on Thursday to find out what they look like.

And with that, my groceries have just arrived so I’ll bid you, adieu lovely humans.  Have an awesome weekend.

Emma