1. What We Make Makes Us
When I tell someone about our company, they often ask one of two reasonable questions: “What do you sell?” or “How do you decide what to make?”. I want to share some thoughts about the second question. I think it’s an important question for everyone to ask themselves because what we make reveals who we are.
How we spend our time is a major determinant of the life stories we create. Writers spend a lot of time writing, runners run, inventors invent, and so on. Our choices shape our moments, and our moments shape our lives. Of course, chance plays a role too. We choose what we do, but sometimes surprises challenge or interrupt our plans. Sometimes life encourages us to keep pursuing the activities of our choosing, and sometimes we hit a brick wall or are called to do something else. Despite chance’s ability to upend or alter our plans, we do as much as we can to direct our lives by choosing how we spend our time.
So far, I mostly echo Will Durant’s idea, “We are what we repeatedly do.”
How does this apply to creating or deciding what to make?
I think we are what we repeatedly make. Or, what we make makes us.
All people are creators doing and making things. Sometimes we make art, design a physical product, or write a novel. Other times we lead, have a difficult conversation, or contribute to our communities. No matter what, we make choices about what to do or make, and those choices shape the stories of our lives.
So, the question “How do you decide what to make?” is one I take seriously.
2. Early Days
In the early days of Upgraded Us, we used simplicity to help us decide what to make. We wanted to avoid making anything too complicated or beyond our knowledge. We created products with fewer points of failure to get them to market with less trouble. Our glow-in-the-dark stars were simple plastic cutouts. There was less room for things to go wrong than with a product that was difficult to design or manufacture.
Simplicity is a good principle when trying something new. We don’t ask babies to do things too far beyond their capacity. We applaud the simple things they do, like rolling over or lifting their heads. We celebrate their small developments every day until they become adults more capable than we are. Just like with the idea of ‘crawl, walk, run,’ I think it’s wise to start new ventures as simply as possible. Baby steps allow us to keep taking action without getting derailed by everything we don’t know when starting something new. Choosing the easy path isn’t always best, but it’s helpful when starting a new venture.
Coupled with selecting for simplicity during our early days, we set out to maximize learning. We evaluated dozens of products before choosing to proceed with our glow-in-the-dark stars. We didn’t want to get stuck in analysis paralysis, so we chose the stars and got moving. Decker and I wanted to start learning the processes of creating, marketing, importing, shipping, and using new platforms. We had so much to learn during the company’s infancy that choosing a relatively simple product helped us take action without delay or talking ourselves out of starting. We reduced the pressure of creation and lowered our expectations by seeking to learn rather than seeking to succeed. Learning was success.
One more thing contributed to our decision to make glow-in-the-dark stars–we liked them. Decker and I had them in our rooms as kids, and we liked sci-fi, astronomy, and science. As kids, we were inspired by our glow-in-the-dark stars and thought it would be fun to inspire a new generation. We’ve found it’s easier to work on things we like or want to see more of in the world.
Profit may be the elephant in the room when discussing why a business would choose to make one thing over another. Did we decide to make stars because we thought they’d be profitable? Yes, of course! As fledgling business owners with day jobs we didn’t enjoy much, we needed to make money. Common business advice is to make sure your work is profitable. It’s good advice! Profits enable us to develop new products and support our team. We wanted to be more than profitable, though. We wanted to be fulfilled. We wanted freedom over our schedules and creative freedom for the projects we worked on. From the beginning, we wanted to make cool stuff we were proud of. We wanted our company to become an extension of ourselves and an avenue for sharing what we had to offer.
If you’re keeping track, we decided to make our first product based on these four frameworks:
- Simplicity
- Learning opportunities
- We like it
- Profitability/Meaningful Return
If you’re just getting started with something, I recommend choosing what to do or what to make based on these four criteria. Over time, especially with experience, your criteria will shift. Ours did.
3. Nowadays
Eventually, simplicity became less important to us. Doing what’s easy gets boring. If you’re committed to learning and growing, staying in your comfort zone and doing easy things won’t satisfy you.
Nowadays, we value challenging projects more highly than easy projects. We can attempt harder projects as we become better designers and businesspeople. We end up making things others cannot or do not. It’s also way more fulfilling and fosters learning. Working on demanding projects that strain our abilities and challenge our assumptions is fun.
In part, we made our most recently launched product, Conversation Cards about Spirituality, because they were challenging.
Spirituality is difficult. I’m not well-versed in spiritual matters. For my part, I wanted to make a product that made it easier for people like me to think about spirituality, which I think is important and complicated. Dylan is more familiar with spirituality than I am and created the core of the deck’s contents. Several times through the design phase of this product, I was a few thoughts away from shutting it down, tossing our work in the trash can of failed projects, and moving on to something more doable. I was not confident in my assessment of what qualified as spiritual or what people would benefit from contemplating, let alone what people would enjoy. Spirituality, not to mention religion, is a contentious topic in America. It felt risky to make these cards, especially since we weren’t authorities on the matter. Would people hate the product? Would anyone buy it? Would it positively affect people and help them shed light on their spirituality? Despite being laden with questions, we pushed through and designed the product.
It was fulfilling to place the manufacturing order for the Spirituality Conversation Cards. As Decker discussed in a previous blog, we brought this product across the finish line–the last 10%. Because much of the 90% was difficult, the last 10% was even sweeter. I think it’s brave (and sometimes risky!) to create something you don’t fully understand. To create (or act!) in the face of uncertainty is essential and progresses your life story. It invites chaos into your life and pushes you to a new level of your development. That’s why we choose to make difficult things sometimes. It’s a thrill, risks failure, and something new comes into existence.
These days, we choose new products heavily based on what we think will help you, assuming we can grasp the topic well. We believe that providing value to you on your journey will improve your life (yay!) and give us opportunities to grow as creators and people. We want to see more people prospering, creating, connecting, and finding purpose. If we believe a new product will further that vision, it’s one we will highly consider making. Thank you for providing us with opportunities to serve and do meaningful work!
4. Summary and Questions for You
To summarize and tie everything together, we think how we choose products says a lot about us and Upgraded Us. Those choices determine how we spend our time and what we focus on thereby shaping what we know and who we are. Initially, our choices said we were new and excited to learn. In 2023, we are still learners trying to expand our creative abilities, explore our interests, and create an awesome company. What differs from when we started is our ability to challenge ourselves and our focus on making tools that improve people’s lives. We try to be thoughtful about our projects so they align with who we want to be and positively impact other people. By working on our projects, we learn and grow in areas that are important to us and write the stories we want to tell.
So, how do you decide what to make or do? And, what do those decisions say about you?
