Category: Okdork

How to Start any Project

Mrs. Wharry was my 7^th grade art class teacher. This class was not one of those “art appreciation� classes, where you get to look at pictures and supposedly admire what’s on them, but a full, get down and dirty art class. And the first evidence of that appeared on the second day of class, when I found a big board with what looked like mud in front of me. Mrs. Wharry said that what we had in front of us was “nothing, and you’ll create it into something�. We played with the mud (clay) and eventually got to use the spinning wheel to create pottery that got blasted at 1400º to make it waterproof.

So what does creating pottery have to do with starting a project or a product? As in my art class, you will probably be starting with nothing and only have the raw material to work with, and it’s up to you to use all the art and science that you have to create something.  There are many different steps, but let’s take two examples and then a real world example.

I want to start a web project, what do I do? This comes up a lot, and the answer is to “throw the mud on the wheel� and see what happens. What does that mean for a web project? It means programming something over the weekend and putting it up on the web and getting the feedback. It could also mean buying advertising on Google Adwords for $20 and seeing if your product is of interest to anybody and if anybody does click through, give them $1 for taking your twenty question survey.

What if I’m starting out in advertising?  Don’t be looking for P&G to hire you, but
as Seth Godin says, get out there and do something. Write some ads for the classifieds section of your local paper, call your college paper and tell them you’ll help write ads for their clients free of charge. Write five different ads and put them up on Adwords and you’ll see which one works better in an hour.

My recent example: A little while a go, I was helping a friend with a student government campaign and I thought that he should advertise on Facebook. That night I had seven ads designed and ready to go. We bought 300K impressions for $150 and started running the ads. Two results: 1) We got 15 clickthrus 2) My friend lost the election. Now I have something to work with and I have to rethink my advertising on Facebook.

To start any project, be it a website, network or advertising, start with anything and get moving. Throw that mud on the spinning wheel. Something will come out of it and you can use that feedback to further refine your project or product and decide if you want to continue or to just scrap it.

Thanks to Mrs. Wharry (rhymes with Harry) for teaching me this lesson. Thanks to Noah for letting me write here.  And if this helps you, please let me know.