It’s breakfast time. My two-year old is pushing cars off the end of the table.
You know, just to see what will happen.
My two-year old does a lot of things just to see what will happen. Sometimes his experiments result in new skills, like the ability to predict the cat’s movements so he can grab her tail at just the right moment.
Sometimes his laboratory is filled with tears of pain and frustration, like when the rubbery Tinker Toy piece snaps back into his face… the third time. Ahh, the Wonderful World of Science.
Weird science.
Most of the creative biz owners and freelancers I know are awesome at experimenting with their art (or their code, or user interface). On the flip side, experimenting in your creative business itself can seem kinda scary.
Changing your pricing, creating a retainer system, altering your business structure, taking every Wednesday off… these things are weird adjustments that you might make in your crazy little laboratory (luh-BOR-i-tory if you’re cool). Its all just to see what happens. Maybe the results will be so incredible that you won’t believe you have never tried that thing before. Maybe you’ll be in tears. But you have to push that car off the table to find out.
That’s not to say that fear never comes up, it’s just dealt with so the experimenting can continue. Chris Guillebeau summed up the fear thing on Art of Non-Conformity. Fearlessness isn’t heroic, it’s insanity.
Here’s the thing. If you’re reading this, you’re probably not a huge corporation. That’s good, because small businesses are ideal for making weird science.
We’re flexible. We can try out wacky new things and apply the results in a short time. Big Corp can’t do that without forming a committee or two. They project analyzing results in terms of months and years, not days and weeks. We’re agile and quick and our lab coats are brightly colored.
Sonia Simone talks more about this in her post on Finding Your Village of Customers.
Can we figure out a way to talk about beer?
Of course we can. Twist my arm.
I make my own beer. It’s a relatively new hobby for me, but I have to say the results so far are very satisfying. When you brew your own, there are several things that can go wrong and produce 5 gallons of something very sour. If you don’t sanitize your equipment properly, or you mess around in the fermenter, you get weird results.
My fantastic guide through all this is Charlie Papazian, the guru of home brewing. One of the things he hits you over the head with throughout his book, The Complete Joy of Home Brewing, sums up the attitude nicely. No matter what might go wrong, no matter how you might be afraid you’ve totally screwed something up, his mantra is, “Relax, have a home brew.”
No matter what the results of your weird science, you have an opportunity to learn from it and apply it to your biz. Fear is a natural part of it, but so is the ability to enjoy your time in the lab.
