A Case for Learning the Hard Way
Lately I’ve been meditating about learning. As District Director of Toastmasters D57, I’ve seen my team members and myself grow exponentially. Because it’s so hands on, I feel it’s more valuable than doing an MBA (and a lot cheaper!). When I finish my term this July I plan to write a book. I have a hypothesis that the phenomena we call “learning” can be accomplished in three ways:
Second-hand - through books or stories
Trial and error - through real world feedback
The hard way - things go very wrong and we suffer the consequences (and never want to have it happen again!)
Second-hand
I’ve been an avid reader my whole life and always considered this a good way to learn. I’ve read hundreds of book on leadership, business, product management, sales, and self help (if you think I am kidding, look at my 700+ GoodReads list).
The pros of learning by second-hand:
Terminology and definitions
Mental pathways for possibilities
Hearing from experts
Trial and Error
Trial and error is a vital part of my day to day job and my volunteer work. I’ve discovered that I have to find trusted people to give me honest and helpful feedback on my work in order to learn. The only person who you want to hear “Everything was perfect!”from your mom!
Pros of trial and error:
Consistently improving results
You can feel and see the progress
Rewarding and satisfying
The Hard Way
Learning the hard way isn’t fun. It is painful and costs you something.
Here’s a story on learning the hard way, one I picked out of many failures I’ve experienced. This one is about a small businesses that I started about three years ago.
The idea: Alexander Technique teachers aren’t very technically savvy, but they know they need websites. I would make a template just for them and sell it for a monthly subscription. They just had to fill out a form and the website would be automatically generated.
I felt this idea was perfect in every way.
Reasons why my idea was perfect:
I’d done market research to learn what information would convince an Alexander Technique novice want to click the “Book Now” button.
I’d hired my sister-in-law who was a CS student to code the whole thing.
I’d set up the AWS accounts so all would be ready for our first customers.
I’d come up with competitive pricing.
The business turned into a huge failure. Why was that? Two main reasons:
1) The business could never be profitable or even break even. Because I hadn’t become a cloud expert yet, I didn’t understand Cost of Goods Sold. My operating costs were just barely covered by the pricing. I couldn't increase prices because it wouldn’t be competitive anymore. I was stuck. With no profits I could never hire someone (even part time) to improve the system. It would probably just cost more with customers asking for changes or complaining about technical issues.
2) My customers couldn’t care less about my offering. After talking to 5 to 10 Alexander Teachers I realized that they fell into one of two groups: A) Wanted nothing to do with technology ever. B) Already had a website with great content that was unique to them. They didn’t want an out of the box template.
I was building a product for a non-existent customer.
I learned this after about 8 months of investing in researching and building the first version of the template and system. I only lost about $2k in actual money spent. A lot more money was lost if I was paying myself for all the time I spent thinking and working on it. But now I really know that you need to do hard research about product profitability before you start on a business, and I know about customer research. Yeah, I knew about those before because I’d read 100 books or more about both, but I really know it now.
Conclusion
I think we need all three learning styles to have a well-rounded life. Just reading doesn’t cut it for me. I want to make an impact. Doing is ideal, but occasionally I will step in and fail. Those failures make me learn really well!
“I want to make an impact. ”
I hope you enjoyed learning by my hard way example. But remember, this is only second hand knowledge to you! Go out and try your own business so you can learn by doing with the knowledge that failures are a necessary part of the process!
