Latest / DevQuestions with Tim Corey / 280. Learn How To Make Your Ideas Matter

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280. Learn How To Make Your Ideas Matter · DevQuestions with Tim Corey

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: When Google first came out, I remember having multiple conversations where people said, I could have done that.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_01: If you've ever played Wordle, you probably looked at it and said, I could have done that.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, there are probably examples of software out there today that you had thought about building.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_01: You might have even been working on a version of the software when someone else released theirs.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_01: As software developers, we can have great ideas and the ability to turn those ideas into reality.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_01: So why is it that we don't?
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_01: How you take those ideas that you have and make them matter?
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_01: How you turn your concepts into successful businesses.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_01: That's what we'll talk about in today's episode of Dev Questions.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Dev Questions podcast with Tim Corey.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_01: Software development is more than just writing code.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_01: So let's talk about the rest of it.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_01: Specifically, let's talk about making your ideas matter.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_01: I remember having a conversation with two Microsoft MVPs when I was just getting started with teaching C.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_01: I was telling them that I had started selling courses and that it was going well.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_01: I was able to supplement my income by creating paid courses.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_01: Their reactions were both along the lines of, oh, I've been made to do something like that.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_01: Both of them were skilled communicators.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_01: Both were skilled developers.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_01: Both had the ability to make good courses.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_01: Both knew exactly which courses they would make.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_01: Neither did.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_01: I see that type of scenario over and over.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_01: Skilled people with great ideas that don't go anywhere.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_01: So let's talk about the steps you need to make your ideas matter.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_01: Number one, have a clear, achievable goal.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_01: This is one that people often get wrong because they have these grand ideas.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_01: And when I start asking questions, they don't really know the answer.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_01: It's more hand wavy.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_01: So they say, you know, I'm going to build a search engine.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_01: Where are you going to host that?
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I don't know.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_01: What kind of coding I use for that?
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I'm going to use C Sharp.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, great.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_01: Have you ever built anything like that?
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_01: Uh no.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_01: Do you know what it's going to take?
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_01: No.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_01: What database are you going to use?
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_01: All of a sudden what you have is a vague notion of a thought, of an idea.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_01: That's not the same thing as having a clear, achievable goal.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_01: Building a search engine?
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_01: Probably not your first out-of-the-do.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_01: That's a lot of work.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_01: But maybe having a clear achievable goal is saying, I'm going to build this specific app.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_01: Here's how, here are the things I'm going to do, and here are the steps I'm going to take to do it.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_01: Having ideas that you're throwing all these things into it, not an achievable goal.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_01: So maybe having the first goal be something very, very simple.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_01: That's really important.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_01: And then with that, make sure that it solves a real problem.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_01: Usually these things solve problems, but if you're not careful, when you start dreaming and start thinking up through how this app might work, you lose the thread of why does it matter?
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_01: Why does it matter that you have this app?
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_01: Why does it matter that you're building this solution?
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_01: What's the goal here?
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_01: What's it going to do to help people?
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_01: Because if it doesn't really solve a problem, then why are we doing this?
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so have a clear, achievable goal.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_01: That's step one.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_01: Number two, put in the hard work.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_01: It's very easy to do file new project.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_01: File new project is so rewarding because things happen right away.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_01: And you can work on that over and over.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_01: And you can do, you know, get the starting steps in.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_01: And this is why if if you ever talk to people who are starting a business, you'll see that they have business cards, they have pens with their names on them, they have maybe even shirts or golf shirts with their name on them.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_01: They have the domain name, they have all these things around the business, but that's the easy stuff, right?
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_01: That's the stuff that is quick to do, and you can, as a result, have something in hand.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_01: But it's not really the business, right?
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_01: It's the easy work, not the hard work.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_01: With software development, the hard work isn't file a project.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_01: It's getting through to the end goal.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_01: It's putting in authentication.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_01: It's making sure you check all your edge cases.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_01: It's making sure that you have a complete process in place and you have a logging in.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_01: You have all these things in place that sometimes that last 5% is the longest 5%.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that's the hard work.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_01: Pushing through and getting the hard work done is what's going to separate you from a lot of people.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_01: Because a lot of people will get to the point where they start banging their head against the desk and go, ooh, there's a new idea I have.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_01: Finally, project.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_01: And they're going to drop off.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_01: Where you want to be different is you want to put in the hard work.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_01: Now, this helps if you have a clear achievable goal.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_01: Because if your goal is a bit vague, if you're not quite sure, well then it's even harder to actually implement that.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_01: And so it's that hard work becomes impossible work.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_01: So step one, clear achievable goal, is the foundation for step two, putting in the hard work.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_01: Number three, finish it before you're ready.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_01: Projects are never completed, they're abandoned.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_01: That's really it's a quote from someone I forget who it's from, but that's the kind of thing that you need to think through is how do I finish this?
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_01: Not how do I get everything done, but how do I get it to the point where it's ready to go out the door?
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_01: Because too often people have these projects where they're mostly done.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_01: They're almost done.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_01: Boy, I'm close.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_01: And either they stop putting the hard work or they just aren't ready to say it's finished.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_01: They aren't ready to put it in front of people and say, here, try it, because they know they're going to get feedback.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_01: Well, this isn't ready yet.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_01: And this isn't ready yet.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's not.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_01: It's not ready yet.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's not perfect.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_01: It's got features that need to be added.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's got things that it doesn't do yet, but it does the one thing, and that's good enough to get it started.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_01: And then we'll keep adding those things.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_01: So finish it before you're ready.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_01: And then number four, importantly, critically, tell people about your product or solution.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_01: People call us marketing or sales.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_01: That can be, but at the very least, you have to communicate.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_01: A company that's not great at this is Microsoft.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_01: If you look at what Microsoft offers, you'll probably be shocked.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_01: There will probably be products that Microsoft offers that you might even want to use that you have no clue even exist.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_01: They have people working on them, they've had people working on them for years.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_01: They have solutions out there that you're like, I didn't even know it was a thing.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_01: And you find out that, yeah, it's a thing.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_01: And it's got all this really cool stuff, and you don't even know about it.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_01: Even in the.NET space, I work hard to bring things to light because people go, I didn't know that was a thing.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't know it existed.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_01: You didn't.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_01: Because even though it exists, even though there has been communication about it, there's not been enough.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_01: And you have to figure out ways to do that.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_01: You need to figure out, you know, who am I helping?
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_01: What's that real world problem solving?
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_01: And then how do I get in front of those people, the people who have that problem?
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_01: So that's step four.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_01: Now, it's important to do it.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_01: It's important to spend a lot of time in step four telling people.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_01: But it's critical that you can't tell people about your project solution if you don't have it.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_01: So you had to have a clear, achievable goal, you've had to put in the hard work, and you've had to finish it, especially before it's ready.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_01: But you had to do all those things in order to get to step four, which is telling people.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_01: Too often people skip to step four, right?
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_01: They tell people about their great idea.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_01: I got this great idea.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_01: That's great.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um, doesn't matter.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_01: You know, and that's kind of harsh and that hurts to hear.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_01: But I've got hundreds of great ideas.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_01: I've got a OneNote that's that's filled with great ideas.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_01: For my company, I've got great ideas for you.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_01: I've got great ideas I want to implement to help you learn software development better.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_01: But they're sitting there.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_01: And so they're just ideas at this point.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_01: And that's not going to help anybody.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_01: I need to work to change the idea into a finished product that's launched that I can then tell you about.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_01: Because if I get that out of order, well, then we're just dreaming and we're just wishing.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_01: And wishing doesn't really help us actually make our products matter.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_01: So doing these four steps isn't going to guarantee success.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't say if you do these four steps, your product will matter, that people will love it and it will be a success.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_01: But not doing any one of those four steps almost certainly guarantees failure.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_01: So I can't guarantee success.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_01: I can't guarantee the public will love it.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_01: I can't guarantee it will be the next billion-dollar idea.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_01: But I can almost certainly guarantee that if you don't do these four steps, that your product's going to be a failure.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_01: So you can take almost certain guaranteed failure and change into has a chance for success by doing those four steps.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_01: So turning your idea into something that works puts you into a very small group of people.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_01: Just getting to the it's launched, not even step four of telling people.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_01: Just getting into the it's launched puts you in a very small group of people.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_01: Like I said, I have fellow MVPs that say, Oh, I'd love to create a course.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_01: Great.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_01: Have you?
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_01: Well, no, I, you know, you could have.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_01: And quite frankly, there's a lot of people out there that are better communicators than I am, that are smarter than I am, that know more about software development than I do, that haven't.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_01: It's putting you into a very small group of people when you actually complete, when you actually finish something, deploy something.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_01: Most people get stopped at the idea stage.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_01: Then the next group of people get stopped at the hard work stage.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_01: The next group gets stopped at the, well, it's not quite finished stage.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_01: Okay?
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_01: By turning your ideas into a working product, you give it the only possible chance it will ever have to succeed.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_01: Make your ideas matter by actually building and launching them.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks for listening.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_01: As always, I am Tim Corey.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for joining us for this episode of Dev Questions.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: When you're ready to learn to think and code like a professional developer, head over to IamtimCorey.com and enroll in a course.