One thing I constantly have to remind myself is to accept criticism. Not even just accept it. Relish in it. Roll around on the floor in it. Actively seek it out from every source, from a babbling idiot on the street, to technology experts, to tech savvy kids that are convinced of their own unalienable 20-20 vision of the future.
In starting EV, we have sought the council of CEOs, developers, bloggers, venture capitalists, friends, colleagues, and anyone else that would listen to our own vision.
From them we have heard the good, bad, and indifferent:
“If you don’t do this, someone else will, and it WILL be here.”
“Why would you make a desktop platform, everything is going web”
“It seems you have the bull by the tail. It’s too big and your resources are too sparse”
Each of these spats of –isms, and many more we have heard, is true to a point and helpful to us, but they certainly can’t stop our progress.
“You’re afraid of making mistakes. Don’t be. Mistakes can be profited by. Man, when I was young I shoved my ignorance in people’s faces. They beat me with sticks. By the time I was forty my blunt instrument had been honed to a fine cutting point for me. If you hide your ignorance, no one will hit you and you’ll never learn” - Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451
One thing that has constantly struck me as we go through the process of building a company is to relish criticism and mistakes. If we didn’t we would not be able to keep moving forward. In every area of business, communication and software development there are people that are better, faster, and stronger than you. But to improve and to reach new levels you have to be able to talk to an expert in that area, accept the truth of what they are saying, improve and keep moving forward. One thing to me is clear, much like we all do with the concept of death; You must blind yourself to failure and to actively repress that success is not a given or you can never be successful.
And a moment of zen: Julie’s suggestion for our blog header:
del.icio.us Tags: Life,Business,Failure
[...] Make Mistakes. Make a Lot of Them - Shawn Busteed, evDeliv One thing I constantly have to remind myself is to accept criticism. Not even just accept it. Relish in it. Roll around on the floor in it. Actively seek it out from every source, from a babbling idiot on the street to technology experts. (tags: Criticism) [...]
July 26th, 2008 at 12:28 am