Yesterday, I wrote about one idea from Jon Spoelstra’s book Ice To The Eskimos.
Well, brace yourself, because today, I got… another. Says Spoelstra:
“Pay bonuses for failure”
Spoelstra believed that the best companies any business could imitate were high-tech companies, because high-tech companies have to constantly innovate.
How do you innovate?
You gotta have ideas.
How do you have ideas?
You gotta get over the notion that’s been beaten into so many of us — via previous jobs, via decades of being at the mercy of professional teachers who accomplished nothing in life except a teaching diploma, and via that smarty-pants girl named Lydia, who always raised her hand in class, and was so smug about it — that there is always a right answer and a wrong answer, and while it’s good to have the right answer, it’s catastrophic to have the wrong answer.
In other words, people are afraid of failure.
Of sounding and looking dumb.
Deadly afraid of it.
Not good for coming up with new ideas.
So you gotta coax them out of their hardened protective shell.
Spoelstra’s method was to actually pay people extra for failing ideas. If somebody on his team tossed out an idea that went on to be a proven failure, the tosser-outer would get a monetary prize.
This is how the Nets (the NBA team Spolestra was working with) came up with innovations of all kinds — some small, others worth millions of dollars to the franchise, all of them previously unimaginable to anyone.
I read this. And I told myself, “I should try doing the same.”
Then I told myself, “No, that would be crazy. It would never work.”
Then I told myself, “Perfect. Sounds like a great experiment to try.”
So here’s my offer to you today:
Send me an idea. If it fails, I’ll send you $100.
A few added rules to give some structure to this offer:
1. Let’s limit the scope to ideas about how I could make more money, specifically via this newsletter, or the courses and trainings I’ve created for it, or the coaching I offer on and off.
2. I will pay you $100 if I actually put your idea in practice and find it does NOT work.
For that to happen, your idea has to be credible enough and tempting enough that I actually want to give it a try.
As a negative example, “Sell meth via email” sounds vaguely criminal, and I would not want to attempt it, even if it’s to prove you wrong.
As a second negative example, ”Start a YouTube channel” is so broad, open-ended, and intimidating-sounding that I would not choose to tackle it, even though there might be a perfectly failing idea hiding there.
3. What do you get if I try out your idea and it turns into a smashing success? You get the pleasure of seeing your intelligence manifested in the world. Plus, I will put you on the throne of the kingdom of Bejakovia for a day, and all the happy citizens will know your name, and the great deeds you have accomplished.
So there you go.
$100 for your failing idea.
Take a bit of time. Think about what you know about my newsletter, my assets, my skills. Think about what you know about internet marketing in general.
Come up with an idea how I could do better. Send it to me. And if it fails, it pays.