I’ve learned how important an iterative approach can be to business (and more). For example, as entrepreneurs, my wife and I are passionate about helping others learn, set goals, grow, and achieve. We’re constantly trying to find people whom we can help with these goals. It’s no different than any small business that has a quality product/service, seeking to find more clients. Because our time is our most precious resource, it is imperative that we test marketing, communication, and methods before we scale them up. We need to avoid making assumptions (that something will work) before we spend dollars on marketing, or spend our time. Just because we think it will work, doesn’t mean it will work. In business, we can be our own worst “Sample of One”.
So we are careful to document exactly what we are doing (email verbiage, target market attributes, web page counters, etc.) so that we can measure every round of effort we make – every iteration. We take action, measure the results, and tweak as necessary. Write, test, repeat. Iteration after iteration… making progress towards our goals. We’ve all heard Edison “failed” over 1,000 times in his pursuit of inventing the light bulb. When asked about these failures, Edison replied to the effect of, “I didn’t fail 1,000 times. The light bulb was an invention with 1,000 steps.”