Omar Usman – 3 Things I Learned from Little Bets Peter Sims

In this video, I'm sharing 3 things I

learned from the book, Little Bets by Peter

Sims. And the basic premise of the book

is this, is that little bets, little experiments

and creative thinking can be used to identify

possibilities and achieve greater outcomes. One example that

he gives is like that of a comedian.

When we see someone like Chris Rock on

a Netflix special or an HBO special, what

we don't see are the dozens or hundreds

of experiments

that were put into crafting that special. We

don't see them right we don't see comedians

writing jokes and going to clubs every night

and testing them out. Testing out different punch

lines, different analogies, examples, test testing out different

word choice or tone of voice or any

of these things. But they go through multiple

iterations and experiments to figure out what is

the best way of doing this. That same

philosophy of experimentation

can be applied across multiple facets of life.

And so the first thing that I learned

was that great ideas

are not magically born.

They come about through a series of experiments.

One great example of this is the post

it note by 3 m. 3 m was

trying to develop a super strong adhesive and

through experiments and multiple iterations,

they ended up developing the post it note.

Challenge with this, you know, and now that

sounds like a great story. Say, okay, that's

great. I need to have this mindset

of just doing all different types of experiments

and I'll be successful.

The challenge is is that it requires deprogramming

a lot of things that we've grown up

with. See, in school, throughout our entire schooling

experience, we're taught a set of facts, we're

taught how to retain those facts, and then

we're tested on our retention of those facts.

When we get into the workplace or into

a career,

what we find is that management science is

basically trying to figure out how to break

down the tasks that we do into a

repeatable,

optimizable format so that we can be more

efficient.

The idea of just, you know, being able

to fail, to creatively think, to try different

things, it's a lot more difficult to achieve.

And so one of the things that we

get from this is that this mindset of

little bets, of experimenting,

if someone really understands this because it's more

rare, it's that much more of a valuable

skill and it actually helps you to achieve

and find and unearth those more successful ideas.

The second thing that I learned was that

a growth mindset is needed for Little Bets.

In order to experiment,

you're going to fail a lot. You're gonna

have a lot of things that you try

and they're not going to work. Now when

someone has a fixed mindset,

they think that their skills and their capacity

and their ability to succeed

has already determined. Like, I'm only gonna be

so good at x y z. And so

if I can't do it, there's no point

in trying. And so when they experiment and

try something and they fail, what they do

is number 1, they stop. But number 2,

is that they view it as a reflection

on themselves. That the fact that I'm failing

at this means I'm less intelligent or that

people are going to think badly of me.

I'm not gonna get the validation that I

need. A growth mindset on the other hand

is just approaching it almost like a scientist.

Like, okay.

I tried this experiment and it didn't work.

Now let's write down. Let's see. What did

we try? What were the variables? What can

I change? And let's iterate again and try

it again. They're looking at these failures as

an opportunity to to succeed. Like, okay. That

didn't work. Let's see if I can change

it. Let's see if I can get something

to work. And they view these as an

as a way essentially to fail forward. And

so someone with a growth mindset,

they're not concerned with what people think about

them. They're not concerned about that validation of

it working right away. They're just simply experimenting

and trying and see what they're able to

unearth.

The third thing that I got from this

book was the idea of small wins. And

now that's something that we're familiar with, but

small wins are vital when we're trying to

build something. See what happens a lot of

times is, especially in the business world, is

people come up with an idea

and or a service or a product,

and they think that they've got it figured

out. They'll take out a loan or they'll

try to raise a bunch of money and

they'll go out and do things,

and they've never actually validated the idea. They've

never seen that it actually works. And you

see this on the TV show Shark Tank

all the time. People show up and they've

got this product

and the investors say, like, okay. Well, what

do you have? Do you have any sales?

They're like, no. This is a ground floor

opportunity. They're like, okay. Well, what do you

have to show for it? Is there any

interest? You know, what what wins do you

have under your belt? And they'll be like,

well, it's just a great idea.

Well, the reality is a great idea is

just not enough, but a lot of people

think they have a great idea. They invest

everything they have into it, and then a

lot of times they end up failing. They

end up not succeeding because, really, with that

thing that they thought was a great idea,

the market didn't want it. And so they've

invested a lot and they've lost a lot

as a result.

A small lens mindset on the other hand

is saying, like, okay. I've got this great

idea. Let's figure out the smallest possible version

of that. So maybe I create a prototype,

and maybe I have some friends try it

out and see if it works. And if

that works, okay, now I can take the

next step. If not, if my friends didn't

like it, I can go back to the

drawing board and say, okay. What about this

prototype do I need to change? What needs

to be different in order to make it

work? And what happens is that when I'm

constantly checking in on small wins, it helps

me to develop a roadmap. It signals me.

Keep going down this path or

change direction. Or as, you know, they say

in the start up world, pivot.

But I have to be looking for those

small wins and seeking that validation

in order to be able to get that

signal of continuing or changing direction. And so

that's why I get on Shark Tank, you'll

see people come in and they'll be like,

okay. Well, I've got this great idea. My

you know, I did a Kickstarter campaign. I

raised a certain amount of money. I've got

a retailer that wants to purchase my product,

but I don't have the money to fulfill

that order. And so even though they don't

yet have 1,000,000 of dollars in revenue, they

don't have this great big success,

but they have enough small wins to indicate

that we're on the right path. And it's

those experiments

that really give you that signal. So make

sure you're always looking for small wins. Make

sure that you're experimenting. And the other thing

is be willing to fail fast. Being with

small wins, it gives you the ability to

fail quickly. See, with the comedian,

they're testing jokes that they wrote the same

day. And so they're not invested in that

idea. If it doesn't work, it doesn't work.

They can discard it and move on. When

we become emotionally invested in our idea or

financially invested in our idea, we've got a

lot more at stake.

When it doesn't get validated, it's a lot

it's a much tougher pill to swallow. And

so we keep churning our wheels, we keep

going down a path that

has no validation, has no feedback. But because

we're so bought into it, we have to

keep going and the failure becomes

that much tougher, that much harder to deal

with. So you fail fast. You look for

small wins. When you get those small wins,

you go down the direction that you need

to go. And these little bets, these little

experiments

open the doors to much greater success. Hope

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see next. Thanks.