Making it look easy
Before Blake Mycoskie founded Toms Shoes, he started several other businesses. A campus laundry business at SMU, a failed reality TV channel called Reality Central, and an online driving school called Drivers Ed Direct.
Driving a car is complicated. Pedals and blinkers and mirrors and merging and blind spots. But when we drive to the grocery store, we hardly think about any of that. We just get in and go.
It’s automatic.
After years of driving, we’ve become unconsciously competent.
But we didn’t start out that way. The first time we got behind the wheel, we followed a checklist. The first time we merged onto a highway, our pulse raced.
We had to go through the four stages of competence before we could drive to the grocery store without thinking.
Unconscious incompetence - I don’t know what I don’t know.
Conscious incompetence - Okay, this is harder than it looks.
Conscious competence - I can kind of do this now, but success requires constant attention and effort.
Unconscious competence - I got this. And I don’t even have to think about it anymore.
Unless we’re prodigies, we don’t start at Stage 4. And when we’re learning a new skill, most of us quit at Stage 2. Most skills worth building are a lot harder than they look.
That’s why so many of us only know a few chords on the guitar. Or only a few words of a foreign language. It’s also why 90% of startups fail.
Before Blake Mycoskie founded Toms Shoes, he tried starting a 24/7 all-reality cable TV channel called Reality Central.
“I was so confident that the idea was going to succeed that I went out and bought a brand-new Porsche—in bright yellow, no less. I felt like I was flying.” - Blake
Then everything fell apart.
“The hardest part of this experience was having to call each and every investor and explain to them that their money was gone. What made it even worse is that many of these investors were friends and family members.” - also Blake
Starting a business is hard.
But there are over 30 million small businesses operating in the US. And millions of people can drive cars, play the guitar, and speak a foreign language.
Last year, Toms sold almost $400m worth of shoes.
If we decide a skill is important, we can reach unconscious competence. It may require checklists and racing pulses and even a collision or two. Our first startup might fail.
Most skills worth building are harder than they look.
But if we push through all that, it gets easier. We can get there.
