Letting the boat float

Maybe, as a result of your initial effort, there will be ripples. (Image by StarFlames)

When I first came up with the idea of The Little Middle School, it seemed a bit wild. Me, a music teacher, “homeschooling” a dozen middle schoolers in every subject?

But I had the time (sort of). I had the space: a music school that was empty prior to 3:00 PM each day. What would be the harm in exploring the concept just to see what would happen? If everyone thought it was silly, I’d let it go.

It was from this place of emotional detachment that I began making calls and emails to people in my community, sharing my proposal along with that most elegant of sales pitches: “Let me know if you know anyone who might be interested.”

I’m not joking. It’s beautiful. It is the perfect way to test an idea. It’s gentle and low-pressure, which makes it ideal for contacting people out of the blue the way I was doing.

Best of all, it was sincere. I really did want them to let me know if they knew anyone who might be interested. I didn’t want to convince anyone — I wanted to see whether the word would spread on its own.

I was setting my little paper boat into the water without a push. The wind would either take it or not.

Interestingly, most of the people I talked to — in fact, almost all of them — said, “Yes, we would be interested in this school.” And then, they told their friends, and their friends reached out and contacted me. Within weeks, The Little Middle School had its first cohort of students.

I promise you that if I had not received that initial interest, I wouldn’t have gone to the trouble of starting the school. I would have found some other way to serve the community’s needs that matched my skills and interests. But because people responded enthusiastically to the idea, I embraced it as well.

As I experiment with my current projects (group business coaching and a soon-to-be-launched content strategy program), I’m taking a similar approach to the one I made use of to launch The Little Middle School ten years ago. I’m once again letting my little boat float out onto the water instead of forcing it into particular trajectory.

Indeed, that’s how I arrived at these projects in the first place: They are a response to what people have been asking me for. Therefore, I’m likely to meet with a favorable response when I make an offer.

Does that make me the little boat, nudged along on the breeze of other people’s wishes? No, I think of it as a collaboration. There’s plenty of stuff that people have asked me for that I didn’t want to do, and plenty of stuff I’ve offered that nobody really wanted. The key is to find the match: the ideal marriage of my interests and skills to that which other people are looking for.

Of course, I’ll continue to put my own effort into spreading the word about what I do. That’s how I meet the people who are predisposed to be interested in what I do, along with the people who know those people.

However, the true test is whether a handful of them end up saying yes and telling their friends. Is your work and worth talking about? To use a word associated with Seth Godin’s teachings on this subject, is it remarkable?

If you have a project you’re passionate about, it may take time before you encounter the kind of people who would be interested in it. On the other hand, you might discover that the hard part is finding something that those people will easily say yes to and share with their friends. This process is less fraught when you are open to investigating multiple possibilities instead of getting attached to one precious idea.

Being open to adjusting your offer based on feedback (including indifference) puts you in a position to iterate. It allows you to find something remarkable enough that the people you want to serve will meet you more than halfway in bringing it to life. As a result, everyone benefits.