5 Practices Business Owners Can Learn From Makers
Business owners are constantly looking for an edge to enhance their products and get them in front of more people.
But businesses copying other businesses can only get so far. At some point, the entrepreneur area of the internet becomes an echo chamber for the current popular device. For those who want to grow, they'll need to look outside traditional business arenas for answers.
Makers have a knack for improvement and innovation, specifically from 5 key practices, that business owners can learn from.
Practice 1: Practice On Yourself
Every Maker has a workshop (even mobile shops count) and some of our best education comes from building shop projects.
When Makers want to learn a new technique, we don't try it out on a commission piece, but on some shop furniture or jig. This keeps the stakes low since only we see the results, but also increases the likelihood that customer pieces are that much better.
Practice 2: Forget Perfection
Most Makers start out wanting every project to be perfect, but we quickly learn that perfection is impossible.
It's been said that the mark of a master maker is their ability to effectively hide their mistakes. It's not that they don't happen, but we set up the build in such a way that any mistakes can be put in a place that minimizes or eliminates any impact.
Practice 3: Get Better Every Project
Yes, we just talked about forgetting perfection, but it's also important to try to get better with every project.
The goal here isn't to ultimately get to perfection, but for each project to be better than the last in a small way, which compounds over time. The key is to continue progressing forward so that you get the volume you need while also improving results.
Practice 4: Change What Isn't Working
Makers can only be as effective as their workshop, which is under constant evolution.
If 3 tools always seem to be in the way of each other, we don't leave it, form a committee, do analysis, and propose solutions, but move the tools and get back to building. Instead of hoping problems solve themselves or the "perfect idea" will magically fall from the sky, we make a change, see if it works, and keep iterating till it's how we want.
Practice 5: Create Your Environment
A Maker's workspace is a reflection of them, so we create our own ideal environments. to facilitate Making things.
Business owners can also create their own environments to stay focused on what they need to be working on. Instead of constantly working in clutter and disorganization trying to will your way to a flow state, build or buy some organizational solutions to create your ideal focus environment.
