Build Something

I’ve recently arrived at the stage in my career where I want to market myself to a wider community. I’ve decided that the way to do that is to write, and so here I am. I do know there’s no point in writing things nobody will want to read, I’m not an academic, so I hope you will find this immediately useful.

My first step was to look at ways to market myself I was immediately struck by a problem. It seems I don’t exist. When I then looked at what writing I had ready to go, I decided that it all needed more context and verisimilitude. I want to build your trust in my words. If you understand what and who I am, and what and who I am not, then I will have laid a scene before you. You can then judge me on my merits.

I next prepared a list of the things that I have achieved in my life: my education, job experiences etc., and surprisingly I found that I couldn’t point a finger at any of it. It has all vaporised.

This isn’t in any way a warning, nor am I in need of commiseration. I simply would like to float some data I have collected out into the wider world because I want young, clever people to think a little about what it is they are building. Ready?

I will begin by telling you what I do. I think of things, I tell people about them, and I build them. I’ve built computing platforms, electric classic cars, office furniture, racing motorcycles, toolboxes and a revolutionary numberplate for BMX bikes which was a stylish catastrophe.

It was all very hard work, and good work, but I find that despite all of my efforts, I am nothing because I am not any one thing to a high enough level. This is not to say I am nobody, as can be attested by my many collaborators and recounted by my victims. The thing is; I have no formal description. I have only informal status, in that a few people know exactly what I can do; but I must, for good reasons, work through others. All of my realised work must come to you through engineers, lawyers and marketers. This is because while I have provided many professional people with potent fuel, I myself am not officially qualified to provide anyone anything. At all.

Though I am officially nothing, I can teach you how to connect cells to make batteries. I can model systems in complex scenarios and explain them. I can arrange for velvet to stick to cedar and I can teach you to drive faster than the guy in the office who keeps trying to get you all to go to his cousin’s indoor kart track. I could easily electrify your ride, whatever it may be. I can do all of these things, then I prove I can do these things by doing them. This is expensive and tiring because I constantly have to earn my place.

When I began imagining my life — I had prematurely and unexpectedly hit the workplace at the age of fifteen — I wasn’t planning on becoming a jack of all trades, but clearly something about the way I played the hand I was dealt led to my having been limited to being just a cog in the expressions of my imaginings.

This is not about me. I’m merely earning my place in this room, which I do instinctively. We all have to do it. The previous paragraphs are context for my article about providing context.

You’ve probably already noticed that if you are a new or unknown member of a team you don’t exist until you have the attention of the grandees. Successful people can only exist if they have removed noise from their environment, and until you’ve earned your place you are noise. Don’t go crying to HR, they only exist to protect organisations from their employees. The way to gain that respect is by knowledge, imagination and integrity. I can recommend coaches for all three qualities if you need a certificate. I’m the one in the middle, which is cozy; Terrible if you’re one of triplets.

‘I know because I built that.’ is the phrase you need. The people around you then know who you are. My disadvantage has been my place in this process. I was last employed by a company I didn’t own or co-own in 1993. Every penny I’ve earned since then, and I’m mortgage-free in an idyl, has been from my own ideas expressed by other people. The problem is that it wasn’t worth it. Not remotely. All the things I have built and all the projects I have participated in are now part of the atmosphere around us: Diluted to an homeopathic ratio, and just as effective. I have no idea if I have done any good and I suspect I will pass unnoticed.

How would you like to have to explain all that at EVERY first meeting? Listen to Uncle Matthew then.

You have to build something. You have to be connected to the things you build. The things you build must endure. Imagine being able to tell the world that you were the one who didn’t think WD39 was quite good enough, or that your dodgy paper glue could be a new class of product useful for attaching passwords to the side of monitors. Making sure your name is on progress is what will make the difference in your later career.

It’s not about persistence, which is overrated and damaging. Careers have drifted away in the name of perfection, and even if you succeed your invention might be pointless. James Dyson made billions while deafening the middle classes with a physics experiment when what they really wanted was a vacuum cleaner.

You could be the person who sees another use in your product, as happened with Viagra and Rogaine to the relief of my cohort. You could be the person who suggests seat heaters while your colleagues crow about how they have managed to encase the thinnest sliver of leather into cold textured plastic car upholstery. You could be the one who notices that there could be a simple explanation for a change in customer behaviour. Perhaps they’ve noticed that your graphics chips run AI well, in which case it’s time you noticed it too, and got your name on the solution.

While all individuals evaluate what is in front of them we calculate worth as a temporary hive mind, and for a short time that’s all there is in that particular granfalloon. Witness the ripples of culture spreading through social media every day. One minute it’s a hatred meme for a particular politician, the next day it’s sea shanties; and the speed with which they share (in both senses of the word) their opinions has turned capitalism into a hair trigger mechanism. Fortunes are made and lost in the most fleeting of products and memes. Each group is mayflies by a pond and bubble universes in eternity. That cliche of ‘no business plan survives first customer contact’ got to be a cliche by working hard and now it means you must notice how ideas change when people get together and talk about them. Maybe you’re in the fortunate position of producing something which has a global market but is only be used against the sternest professional advice, like cigarettes and cotton buds. People will overcome your best efforts to tell them what do. Hallelujah.

Notice, suggest, and don’t let people forget who suggested it. Search for Miss Shilling’s Orifice, it’s worth it. I promise.

You might think your journaling app is a great scrapbook, but I use mine as a way of being able to prove what was said on a given day, should I need to at a later date. I paste the ideas I’ve communicated, and I do return to harvest dates and facts. That’s why I journal, and why Samuel Pepys had to stop.

So you occupy your opportunity space, which means you have noticed something important. Next you must model and plan. Create a project crucible, where the only way out is to get it done. You then explain to others the important concepts (some people call this selling) and make sure people understand. Make something people can point a finger at. Make sure your name is attached.

I once did an excellent Tweet. On Twitter, which is called Twitter. I haven’t made good tweets a habit, but it might be a necessary habit in the future. I recently went back to acknowledge a reply and found it to have been effectively sponsored by a company which makes a device for cleaning corncobs. I’m not saying it’s a bad corncob cleaner and I’m not sure why they showed someone using it while it was attached to the window of a modern apartment in a complex with glass curtain windows. I can assume that the inventors are proud of themselves for this, and it got them to the point in their business careers where they go to sponsor my excellent tweet and make it about them. This is accepted as a norm.

If you leverage a platform it will leverage you. Spread the love among platforms, get a list going and speak directly to people who will remember YOU. Give them value.

The valueless will disappear not because of what it is, but because it is not connected to any value. Popular culture has value because it connects the fragments of our lives. A urinal in a public lavatory is just a urinal until someone explains why an artist putting it in a gallery has value. It’s a transitory step to meaning.

Many opportunities to build are actually opportunities to connect, and that’s spiffing, but it does depend upon the kindness of strangers when it comes to getting paid. This is true of social media, eBay, and even Amazon, which is a lesson in how to turn a delivery company into a way of life. If you remove the lifestyle element of getting everything delivered, which was pretty much the idea with Amazon, then Amazon is a warehouse, and parcel carrier. You must understand what your concept is. If you own the company that has invented something like that, then take the money and run because once it’s a cultural norm you won’t get the credit unless you want to make yourself famous. Steve Jobs pulled it off, Jeff Bezos didn’t and has to make do with merely having nearly all the money in the world. I can guess which way Elon’s going, but I’m far from objective. Nothing upsets an unqualified first principles engineer with a tendency to microdose like a qualified first principles engineer with a tendency to microdose.

Currently, I am first-principles engineering a range of components to convert classic cars to electric power. The central brain will include my intellectual property, so I will have built something. If I merely supplied the components I would be just introducing Chinese component manufacturers to car enthusiasts. By building something I remain attached to the end result and can point at that fact.

Keep going until you can build something that will last. Make your milestones public, people love a bit of intrigue. Open a vein, if necessary; I’ll let you know how my doing that goes. Be remarkable. Don’t ask me how to do that, I haven’t a clue so I’ll refer you to the work of Seth Godin. If there’s one class of professional I will always have to express myself through, it’s marketing.

The goal is to have your name attached to real things that last. If you have your name on the iPod you will live forever because the iPhone is an iPod with a social life. If you build THE FIRST social network then you have stitched the world together. You can be as proud as you like of your work on any subsequent social network, but it will only get you a similar job. By the time you need a mortgage, you need to be a headline.

I can assure you that you won’t get far with; I think I was the first in the U.K. to jump a BMX bike over a car. I once drove around the outside of a Grand Prix winner through a corner with no run-off. I invented an object cloud with fine-grained permissions and strong typing.

While you might think that the last one would be a good entry in your curriculum vitae (resumé in the former colonies) it becomes a little more difficult when you are asked to point at it. We were unlucky with a bank, ambitious employees in partner companies, and each other. The patent sold for a record sum and there was, I’m sure, a good reason why I was never paid. Had we succeeded I would be able to point at it and say that I did it. I was the guy who did that.

It has occurred to me that there is an element of self-branding about this, which is a bloody awful thought. Ask someone younger than me about such matters, but even a superannuated curmudgeon must admit that hating the idea of self-branding is still self-branding. Being English I’m often self-deprecating, and Hugh Grant has done a good job of self-branding as the great Englishman that he is, but to make it work I would have to do what Hugh did and follow in the footsteps of our forefathers across this planet and be competitive, gregarious and insistent about our self-deprecation. In fact I think I’d be so good at it I will march into your country and be more self deprecating than you. That’s how we, the English, branded ourselves, and it got us to the top table for two world wars. Obviously this was delusional and gave us a reputation for being really odd which is wholly justified.

Realising that just doing good stuff was not working for me earlier could have made my life a lot easier, but I didn’t notice early enough. It is not a career. I wish someone had told me, so I’m telling you. It’s quite the thing, to suddenly realise that the assumptions upon which you have lived your life are wrong. We begin with such optimism, and build our careers according to what feels right, but then there is a point where your energy is better spent on enjoying life. As it stands at the moment, someone who has not become a shorthand for something worthwhile will never get to retire, and while that could see the end of the golfing industry there are also negatives. It is no way to live a rewarding life.

Build something.