Jon Henshaw joins Kelsey Jones this week as we discuss the struggle that comes with being creative: constantly starting new projects and taking side quests to constantly "improve" things, only to our detriment. We talk about when "done is better than perfect," some side projects we're working on, and more!
To learn more about StoryShout podcast advertising opportunities and guest openings, visit us at StoryShout.co
And don’t forget to leave us a review and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever else you listen to podcasts.
You can also connect with @StoryShout on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram. Kelsey is @wonderwall7 on Twitter.
Jon Henshaw joins Kelsey Jones this week as we discuss the struggle that comes with being creative: constantly starting new projects and taking side quests to constantly "improve" things, only to our detriment. We talk about when "done is better than perfect," some side projects we're working on, and more!
To learn more about StoryShout podcast advertising opportunities and guest openings, visit us at StoryShout.co
And don’t forget to leave us a review and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever else you listen to podcasts.
You can also connect with @StoryShout on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram. Kelsey is @wonderwall7 on Twitter.
You're listening to the story shout podcast hosted by Kelsey Jones. We're a weekly podcast dedicated to destigmatizing failure and laughing at our normalcy. Don't forget to subscribe and leave a review on iTunes. Hi, everyone, Welcome to Story shout. My name is Kelsey Jones and I'm joined here today by John Henshaw. John is a friend of mine from the marketing world. I think we met speaking at state of search in Austin, if I remember right, so that could be it. Remember, it's, everything's a blur? And then after two years of nothingness, I have no idea. Yeah, yeah. Where I've Been somewhere in a past life we met. So John, thank you for coming on. Yeah. Have you been here? So John, what do you suck at? Well, I guess I have to like pick one. Right? Yes, just, exactly. I would say that, as it relates to the kind of stuff that we do. I, I suck at trying to do too many things. Two a thing. And, and the thing that probably comes to mind, although it's somewhat of a distant memory, I guess is the years that Raven, with Raven Tools, we, you know, we started off simple and, and it was sort of like, we're going to have a rank tracker, and we're going to read some reports or whatever. And, and it's only gonna be for SEO. And I think that it's really hard as an entrepreneur, and wanting to grow a business, to not want to do all the things. And I could never overcome that. I was never able to overcome that. When I was doing that software, and you know, we wanted to add social, we wanted to add paid, we wanted to we wanted to do all the things when there were already companies doing those things, and it was outside of our wheelhouse. Particularly mine, I mean, mine being SEO. So it was it was along the lines of, you know, what we're going to do all things social, we're going to we're going to do all the social posting all the stuff like that. And of course, you got buffer and and tools out there that have perfected this, and they're constantly improving and perfecting on it. And I think the the biggest issue was with that was that we we couldn't make it awesome. When when you're trying to make all the things you aren't able to ever get the focus and the attention that each one needs to make it really good to make it look the best to make it super competitive, especially when there are companies already out there that that is all they do. And they do it really well. And that's something that I'm not sure I'm over yet, like I've gotten over that. I mean, and and so I've been very slowly on the side working on my version of a minimalist, Contact Relationship Manager. And every single time I look at it, I work on it, I think about a talk to the developer working on it, it is an absolute complete struggle for me to not be like, Okay, we need to ask this, we need to add this task manager, how are we gonna do calendars and you know, whatever, whatever. And when all of my past experience says I shouldn't be doing that. That's a bad idea, John, you should perfect the core features of this thing, which is managing a contact, adding a contact, working with your contacts. Before you go down that road. I think it's hard in tech especially. And this could probably apply to anywhere. But you see other apps or services or software like doing that well, or what you think of well, not even competitors to you. But like so I'm building an app as a side project. And I just hired the developer this week. And we had to narrow down what components to start with in the app or whatever. And she wanted to add like a community feature to it. And I'm like, that's not even, we can't add that. Like that's gonna be a whole other thing. Like community building, adding a community like component to an app is a whole other dimension that the app doesn't even need. And so I had to like put the brakes on it and just say, you know, we can't do that right now. Like right now we need minimum viable product or whatever, like just build something. But it's hard when you're creative, and you're an entrepreneur and you have all these ideas that could work. And so you want to see if they will work but that doesn't mean that they should work or that you should do them. It's funny because the developer you're using, it describes the blessing and curse type of thing, which is you want to work with a software developer, I'm assuming you can't code with anything like I can't. And so and so you want somebody who is going to offer those suggestions, you know, be the guide for how your technology is going to work and that type of thing, you know, you're going to have an idea of conceptually, what is probably going to be good and reasonable. But for the most part, you really need this person to make good decisions. And, and, and like I said, have those ideas. And so it's that that's like a case of, I like the way you're thinking, you know, like, like, Thank you for waiting to make this better. And and I think we would probably agree that a community feature is not a horrible idea. Yeah, there are plenty of reasons why wouldn't want to do it, and I'm sure you probably would feel the same. But but their mind is in the right place, you know, around that, like, oh, you know, this is, you know, you want that creativity from that person. And at the same time, you know, it's, it's, I think, where you were just going with it, which is, but that's not what we're building right now. Like, really, truly, I think he may have said it, really, truly, truly need to have a, an MVP that just does what it's supposed to do and worked really well. And that can be the gravy that comes later. That can be the thing that helps grow the audience for it or, you know, spread the word. Yeah. And I think what's hard, what is hard when it's not your main project, or job or whatever? Is I keep thinking about that, quote, I think Facebook used to say it like yours when they started back. I don't want to I don't you know, I know they're controversial now. But back in the day, when, when they were smaller, they all I think Mark Zuckerberg always said Done is better than perfect. And I tried to think about that, like, okay, in all areas of my life, not just my side projects, but even especially my side projects, like, what can I just get done, where it's not bad, like, I don't want to make it crappy, or like, rush in and make it not work. But what makes it done, and we can move on to the next step of the building process versus Where's what's our version of perfect, where we could add everything all at once. So this takes me back to sort of what I was talking about earlier, which is, I want to offer some clarity, from my perspective, like, what I think about, like done and perfect and that type of thing, which is the habitual chronic issue that I had, when I was at Raven for all those years was, it was done, but then left. Meaning meaning, and actually, some of it is definitely my fault, just because if we're talking about like, our, the thing I suck at, but the other thing had to do with, I have partners and and there's a whole company being run, and we're trying to grow. And so for a lot of other people, when I finally got this thing done, you know as in you built in it, the first idea that, you know, you built it, and it technically works, but it's not complete, and it needs a lot more to go with it. And this is not going to be good enough, and everybody would move on. And I found that to be extremely frustrating. versus the other approach of not adding on things not moving on, which would be I so I've been working on my thing for like three years. I'm on like my third or fourth developer because it just everything like one guy had a tornado take out everything he had. And that was Yeah, yeah, I mean, just like horrible stuff for some of these people. And it's, it's awful. But it has delayed and Lane Lane delay, and I've had to start over and that type of thing. But but with with this, it's done to me versus perfect. Has to do with labels. So the first initial done will be what we might call an alpha, you know, but it's not done. But it's done enough that I'll I'll feel comfortable enough to, to maybe have like private invites, had people come in and start playing around with this type of thing. And even when it's ready to take anybody, it won't be perfect. And it won't be done. But it will be done. And I know this is like probably making no sense because I'm I'm thinking about my own words, right now does that make a lot of sense but the thing I think that I want to bring attention to in regards to like what a sucked in the past and what I really really want to get over and change in my life when I approach this stuff is that instead of trying to add a bunch of new features, after gets like publicly released and everybody can have it and I know it's not perfect and stuff trying to add a bunch of stuff. Spin the time to continue to perfect the thing that you have released. Just don't add a bunch of stuff just perfect. What you have for 612 months, whatever it might be, just keep taking the feedback. You're gonna have have a ton of people, or I'll have a ton of people or whatever that will come and be like, Oh, we should do this? Or can you add that against, you know, it'd be really cool if he did this thing. And I can listen to that I can write it down, but I need to stay away from it, I need to not do it, what I need to do is react to the feedback for the features that exist here. And now, you know, when when they're using it? And? And essentially, because because in order for something, especially for us, for people who are just like, individual, yeah, who's hiring some, some developer, the only way we're ever going to be competitive with this, or, you know, have the market prove it as something that's worthy of, you know, people using and it could be become something is that attention to detail that attention to even it will never reach perfection, we will continually be like, How can I tweak this? How can I make that better? How can I make it a little faster? How can I, how can I make it so there's just little to zero friction to do these very common things that people do with this app, without adding all the other crap. I love that. Because I think it's so easy to get distracted with things that you didn't do. It's, it's easy to miss the things that should be improved. Because you're so I think there's in our culture, it's like, there, you should always be bigger and better than what it was before. But things can be better and still be the same. If that makes any sense at all, like, totally like features are the same, but they can work so much better. And that's, and that's really what probably users want. Like if I if I want an email service or something, I just want it to work, I don't want to, oh, create a website from your emails, or like, say, or share your emails on social, here's all these share buttons, like I don't even want that if I'm signing up for an email provider, I just want to send emails to my email list. And I think in tech, we forget about that. So that's a really good point, like focusing on improving what you already have, instead of chasing the next big, like release or feature. It's really difficult to do it. I mean, as as, you know, us being fellow creators, fellow entrepreneurs, makers, you want to make, you want to do everything in me, says, Keep making it more awesome, and add all these things. And there's a lot of pressure to do that, I mean, that you'll, you'll end up getting feedback from people who do use it, where they're just like, it'd be perfect if I just had this one feature. And it's really hard to ignore that. And so that and I suck at ignoring that I suck at ignoring, suck at not doing a socket, not going to add all the things and so that's why this time around, I'm just gonna do my best to remain disciplined to see if this approach works. Yeah, unfortunately, my life doesn't depend on it, you know, it's, it is a side project, I have a main job and I'm fine, you know, but and so I'm a, I need to remind myself of that, like, this doesn't have to be some giant financial success, you know, course I, we dream of those things we want it to be but but I'm building it because I want it to exist. Like, the thing I'm building doesn't exist, I've wanted to build it for forever. So I'm gonna build it, it might be a giant money stuck. Because I end up being the only person who uses it. But at least it exists and I'm happy and I made something and, you know, whatever. So I don't know that it's just, I hope I could do it. I hope I hope that 612 months or, you know, whatever down the road after this thing gets done and is out there that I just I haven't done the complete opposite of what I just talked about. Yeah, it continued to suck. Right? The app I work I'm working on it's the same thing. It's like I want it so I'm that's why I'm building it and, but those are the best projects because I think it just it is the the journey itself is rewarding not to be like cheesy or cliche, but like to see it get built and finished, I think will be satisfying. It is it is for us. I mean, I'm saying like you have to be the right person. I mean, it's extremely satisfying. It feels really good. And then of course I would say at least for me, it has less to do about the money and if it ever makes any it has more to do with the excitement I get from somebody using something that I also love that's i that craft is that I made that that came from me I mean that's sort of like the makers dream you know? And and I think it's it's amazing if something like that could go on to be a source of revenue and you know, be your business or your lifestyle business or whatever but But just knowing that you've poured yourself into something and something that you really feel strongly about you want to exist. And that gets validated by the market. You know, that's, that's, that's kind of exciting. So I don't know. I mean, that's, there's a little bit of that that drives me in it kind of reminds me a little bit of something I know you do. I think you do a lot, you know, which is like writing and stuff, same type of thing. Like it's, yeah, there's a lot of gratification. Just, I don't know, emotionally, intellectually, I have no idea, you know, that. We're just like, awesome. Like, I wrote something that was important to me that I thought might be important to the people and people, and it resonated with a lot of people. And that there's a really good feeling about that. So yeah, I agree. And that's what I was going to ask you, as you were talking that I thought about is, I think, this process and probably why it's hard to just work on what you already have is because it feels so personal. And it feels so at least for me, I feel vulnerable making it because it whether I'm writing something or you know, building this idea for this app that I've had for years, I feel very vulnerable, making that because I've had the idea and been excited about it for so long. That to finally do it is like very scary for me. And so I think that, like dealing with that in my brain, as well as the logistics of it has have just been a really long road because it's like, you finally get to the point where you can make it and I've had some, you know, stop and go moments where I just am like, not ready, because I'm just so scared that like, what if it doesn't work out. And so I've also been working through the men, you know, the mental, I don't know, emotional side of it, as well. And I think when you're super creative, you you struggle with that, too. So I have this life philosophy that I've adhered to for as long as I can remember, and it's called the philosophy of lowered expectations. And, and it works for me, I mean, I don't I don't think it's a depressing way to live your life, I think it's, it has to do with, I don't expect much from other people, I don't expect them and just don't I mean, like, like, if I if I'm going to the DMV, if I'm going flying, i My expectations are so low, that I expect for delays, I expect for something stupid to happen, I expect for it to not go smoothly. That's my expectation. So I enter it at a much slower pace than everybody else. And when things go smoothly, or holy crap, like things go really well like above and beyond, you know, something goes smoothly. It, it makes life a lot more enjoyable. Like I have found that, for me. My secret to unlocking more happiness in life as opposed to depression or something is, is to lower my expectations, you know, like, and the thing is, is I think it's consistent with reality, which is it? Yeah, we're all just people, right? Doing our best, we're all a little crazy, we're a little crazy, very true. And, and, and we don't know what each other is going through in life. And so I would say that a better way to say that philosophy of lower expectations than it is more of a practice of empathy. Meaning when you leave the door, and you go out into the world, just immediately start practice practicing empathy and assume that, you know, somebody is, you know, they're probably being an idiot, because things are hard for them. Right, they're having a bad day, or eventually it wears off and you get angry, angry at the world, tweet, whatever airlines and do whatever but, but I find that if you approach it that way, you get a little bit of cushion before you reach that place. I love that I so I needed to have more empathy for myself and also not have as high expectation like, not everything has to be so scary. Yeah, well empathy for yourself and, and everybody else like in other words, trying to approach it kind of kind of like how, by the way my backgrounds psychology and counseling, my educational background, so that's probably where that's coming from but but this idea around, you know, relationships, you generally people either think the best of the other person or they think the worst of the other person, and that will determine how they relate to each other. And so it's a lot more along the lines of approach the world with thinking the best before you just assume that trying to screw you over. Wait until there's some evidence of that before Yes, that's your mindset. So that's that's what I was thinking of like, you know, it's empathy for yourself for sure. But also practicing that empathy until you have no more until they give you a reason to be like, Screw you. I love that. cuz I'm trying to get better at assuming the best out of people instead of the worst, because I'm really bad at, like, assuming someone's doing something like out of spite or like, manipulative, and most of the time people aren't. So I definitely feel that I need to get better at that. It's intellect over emotion. I mean, I'm saying, like, emotionally, I'm pretty much down on, on everything. But I'll actually try to convince myself that people were doing the best I can. But as much as I know, I just said all that stuff at the same time. It's like, but I'm, you know, I'm still human. I'm an emotional guy. And I still just some sort of like, I don't know, I walk around with just a complete, complete disappointment in society at most. Yeah, I know, I know. Well, and that's what this podcast is all about, like, just talking about, like our failures. And, you know, everybody's bad at at least one thing, if not several things. So that that's kind of a good point for us to wrap up on. I know, we can talk forever about this kind of stuff. But what's something that you want to try to work on? Or do you have like a mantra or like, Mantra is kind of cheesy, but you know what I mean, like something like that's gonna stay in your head, as you're building. And working with the developer that you want to share. I think it's just staying staying focused and, and onpoint. Just each time I get new ideas, don't act on them, write them down, for sure. Put them somewhere. If you got to get out of your brain, get it out of your brain and make sure you can go back and reference it. But actually, as my dad always says, keep the main thing the main thing. And so I love that. Yeah, so keep the main thing. The main thing is what I'm going to try to do, which I have not been good at at the past in the past. Okay, I will ask you in a few months if your main thing still your main thing. John, so if anybody wants to learn more about what you do or connect with you online, where can they do that? Probably the best place is Twitter, which is Henshaw the h e n SHA W. H I can't say my name. H e n, sh. Aw, so twitter.com/intro And then they could just go to koi wolf.com coi wo lf.com Which by the way is not a koi Wolf. It's actually a coyote wolf hybrid, and there's a whole story behind it. Oh, nothing about it. being coy. Okay, okay. Good to know. I didn't know that piece of trivia. Yeah. So hit me up on Twitter and I'll give you more trivia. Yeah, there you go. Well, thank you John, so much, and thank you to everyone else listening and until next time thank you for listening to the story shout podcast. Don't forget to review us on iTunes and connect with us on social media at story shout, or online at story shout.co Until next time, stay normal.