David T. Fagan: Learn the Law of the Launch

You have probably heard about a hundred 80/20 rules. The funny thing is that probably 80% of them are not helpful at all. Well, here is one that will make a difference. It’s the core concept of the Law of the Launch.

The space shuttle actually uses about 80% of its fuel to lift off and leave the earth’s atmosphere. But once it does it can fly all the way to the moon and back home again.

So much of a business launch, a product launch, or even a relaunch of something existing follows the same law, the Law of the Launch. So much of the hard work has to be done quickly up front; otherwise what you’re launching might never even break through the atmosphere. You can’t just “kind of” take off! Half speed doesn’t even equal half the success. It equals crashing, burning, exploding, or even imploding!

Here are the 7 common pitfalls that lead to a crash and burn launch:

1. Not knowing all the challenges involved: Get first hand information from people who have done what you want to do whenever possible.
2. Underestimating the challenges involved: Always count on it taking a little longer and costing a little more. Several contingency plans can be very helpful as well.
3. Not having a team to support you: You can go it alone and don’t necessarily need full time employees, BUT you should still be enrolling people to give you feedback and support where ever possible.
4. Not having the right team to support you: Some times the team that got you to where you are at will not be the team to get you to where you want to go. There are different types of challenges and different types of teams for those respective challenges. If you have a very technology intense project or business you better have a pretty cutting edge team. If you have a really controversial goal, then you better have a really united team and so on.
5. Being too much of a perfectionist: Sometimes good has to be good enough. You should always test when ever possible. Doing things in phases can also be a good idea. Waiting for everything to be perfect is rarely good advice.
6. Giving up too soon in the heat of the moment: Pick a time frame in which you are going to try to do the business or the project. Give it six months or twelve months. Regardless of the time frame, commit to seeing it through and re-evaluate its progress then. You never want to make a decision to switch directions or quit just because of a bad day or even a bad week.
7. Giving up too late: It’s okay to quit! Just don’t quit in the heat of the moment. That being said, quitting can be good. Michael Jordan quit baseball to go back to basketball. Oprah quit radio to move into TV. Sometimes your efforts and energy have to be redirected and refocused in another way.

Don’t drag out the dream. Test it and try it today. Take your ideas to market as fast as you can. Sometimes you can even sell the idea even before the product or service is finished being created. I’ve seen people waste years on ideas that were never meant to be in the first place. I know people that are now watching someone else make money with the same idea they never engaged.

Fail forward, move quickly, and take massive amounts of action to determine your future success faster.