“I don’t know. Let’s try it and see.”
It’s a phrase I wished more business people used. Because the truth is, none of us know anything. We have theories based on collected data. We have past experience.
But we don’t know anything. The best we can do is try it and see if it works. If you believe in something, and you make it well, then it might work, or it might not. You have to be prepared for either eventuality because you just don’t know for sure.
For years I was told that Ichabod Jones: Monster Hunter wouldn’t sell. It’s currently on its seventh printing. I was told not to have a wordless wraparound cover for Monsters and Other Scary Shit, and it’s still our most funded Kickstarter ever (as of April 2018). I was told over and over again that things I’ve done wouldn’t work, and often the naysayers were right. For every Pixie Dust there are dozens of projects that just didn’t work.
It turns out those naysayers were wrong just as often as they were right. They weren’t trying to be naysayers, either. They were trying to help. They just acted like they knew but in reality they had no idea whether my books would sell or not. Because nobody knows anything at the end. The market changes all the time, and every single person’s audience is a little different.
What might not work for me could work gangbusters for you. While it’s critically important to ask around, talk to people, and get a consensus, just because it’s the consensus doesn’t mean it won’t work…especially if you have an audience. If you have an audience already, you can then test things with them and see if they like it. However, even then, you don’t know if it will scale beyond your audience. You can hope and pray, but you don’t know for sure.
This is why you shouldn’t put all your eggs in one basket, because even the “sure thing” could blow up in your face, but just as often the “DOA” project will go gangbusters. You just never know. All you can do is take high percentage risks and see. This is something lost to us recently. Everybody wants a sure thing. However, if data shows us anything it shows us a sure thing doesn’t exist.
All you can do is play the game.
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