Starting a company is often life-consuming. Between hundred-hour work weeks and valuable networking events and oh, that little thing called "sleep," there's not much time left in the day for doing the things you love, like reading (and no, we're not talking about The Lean Startup.)
When you're so impassioned with, and immersed in, a business idea, it's hard to not only allot time for such hobbies, but also to even think about them in terms separate to the project you're working on. What I'm Reading is a new series we're kicking off to remind you that reading for pleasure and boosting your startup know-how are not mutually exclusive. Each Sunday, we'll be spotlighting a literary suggestion from a Boston thought leader to keep your bookshelf and brain fresh.
Who: Mike Troiano, CMO of Actifio, TechStars mentor and overall marketing and advertising all-star.
Book: Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life by Steve Martin
About: Born Standing Up is Martin's memoir, detailing the actor/comedian/writer's discipline, sacrifice and originality with which he pursued a career in comedy.
In order for a comic to build a stand-up set, he naturally has to go out, tell jokes and see which ones get the best reactions.
"Say you tell six jokes, maybe two kill, two are just okay and two bomb. So the next time you go up, you keep the jokes that kill and tweak the okay ones, and you get only one that bombs," said Troiano, paraphrasing the book's premise. "You keep going through that process until you have a set an hour and half long of material that kills."
To the entrepreneur, this process of rehashing and refining the product or service to fit the needs of the customer is a familiar one. "There's so much wisdom in that idea. Building a business is corrupting your vision with the external reality," Troiano explained.
Without going into the market and testing your ideas with, and listening to, the consumer, all the hard work you put in could be irrelevant. "Be a student of their response...no matter what projects you're doing, it helps move them from where you are, to where you need them to be," said Troiano. "It's not about pivot, it's not some elegant pirouette. It's a lot of hard work and seeing what fits."
