ReWork

and pitch so they were identical pairs. The result became his product’s tag line: “the perfect pair.” Today, Vic Firth’s factory turns out more than 85,000 drumsticks a day and has a 62 percent share in the drumstick market. †
    Track coach Bill Bowerman decided that his team needed better, lighter running shoes. So he went out to his workshop and poured rubber into the family waffle iron. That’s how Nike’s famous waffle sole was born. ‡
    These people scratched their own itch and exposeda huge market of people who needed exactly what they needed. That’s how you should do it too.
    When you build what
you
need, you can also assess the quality of what you make quickly and directly, instead of by proxy.
    Mary Kay Wagner, founder of Mary Kay Cosmetics, knew her skin-care products were great because she used them herself. She got them from a local cosmetologist who sold homemade formulas to patients, relatives, and friends. When the cosmetologist passed away, Wagner bought the formulas from the family. She didn’t need focus groups or studies to know the products were good. She just had to look at her own skin. *
    Best of all, this “solve your own problem” approach lets you fall in love with what you’re making. You know the problem and the value of its solution intimately. There’s no substitute for that. After all, you’ll (hopefully) be working on this for years to come. Maybe even the rest of your life. It better be something you really care about.

     
Start making something
    We all have that one friend who says, “I had the idea for eBay. If only I had acted on it, I’d be a billionaire!” That logic is pathetic and delusional. Having the idea for eBay has nothing to do with actually creating eBay. What you
do
is what matters, not what you think or say or plan.
    Think your idea’s that valuable? Then go try to sell it and see what you get for it.
Not much
is probably the answer. Until you actually start making something, your brilliant idea is just that, an idea. And everyone’s got one of those.
    Stanley Kubrick gave this advice to aspiring filmmakers: “Get hold of a camera and some film and make a movie of any kind at all.” * Kubrick knew that when you’re new at something, you need to start creating. The most important thing is to begin. So get a camera, hit Record, and start shooting.
    Ideas are cheap and plentiful. The original pitch idea is such a small part of a business that it’s almost negligible. The real question is how well you execute.
     

     
No time is no excuse
    The most common excuse people give: “There’s not enough time.” They claim they’d love to start a company, learn an instrument, market an invention, write a book, or whatever, but there just aren’t enough hours in the day.
    Come on. There’s always enough time if you spend it right. And don’t think you have to quit your day job, either. Hang onto it and start work on your project at night.
    Instead of watching TV or playing World of Warcraft, work on your idea. Instead of going to bed at ten, go to bed at eleven. We’re not talking about all-nighters or sixteen-hour days—we’re talking about squeezing out a few extra hours a week. That’s enough time to get something going.
    Once you do that, you’ll learn whether your excitement and interest is real or just a passing phase. If it doesn’t pan out, you just keep going to work every day like you’ve been doing all along. You didn’t risk or lose anything, other than a bit of time, so it’s no big deal.
    When you want something bad enough, you make the time—regardless of your other obligations. The truth is most people just don’t want it bad enough. Then they protect their ego with the excuse of time.Don’t let yourself off the hook with excuses. It’s entirely your responsibility to make your dreams come true.
    Besides, the
perfect
time never arrives. You’re always too young or old or busy or broke or something else. If you constantly fret about timing things perfectly, they’ll never happen.

Draw a line in the sand
    As you get going, keep in mind
why
you’re doing what you’re doing. Great businesses have a point of view, not just a product or service. You have to believe in something. You need to have a backbone. You need to know what you’re willing to fight for. And then you need to show the world.
    A strong stand is how you attract superfans. They point to you and defend you. And they spread the word further, wider,