How to make anything. Part 1

As I wrote about previously, lots of people have lots of ideas, and most of them don’t get beyond being just an idea.

Ever since I ran my first Kickstarter campaign, which was for a razor, people often say to me “how on earth did you know how to make a razor?” From the outside, it can seem impossibly hard to actually make something out of an idea.

The short answer to that question is that I didn’t know how to make a razor.

I do know though, because I figured out how.

I’m a big fan of Guy Raz’s podcast How I Built This. In it he talks to entrepreneurs to learn how they built their products and brands. Almost universally, his guests begin their stories with saying that they didn’t know what they were doing when they started out. Many of those people have gone on to create billion-dollar companies.

The thought of turning an idea into a product can seem so overwhelming that it causes the idea to wither and die. But there’s no reason why you can’t turn your idea into something real.

Step by step

The process will obviously depend a lot on what kind of thing you’re making, but there are common challenges to developing any sort of product or service. There’s not one single, prescribed, process that is perfect and must be followed exactly to achieve a successful outcome. You need to remain focussed but flexible, as there will be false starts, bumps in the road, and wrong turns.

Broadly speaking there are four parts to the process of developing a product. The relative difficulty and importance of each one will depend on what you’re doing, but all will need to be considered - both at the beginning and then often reconsidered throughout your project.

Four stages of the process - convergent & divergent thinking

Despite what that diagram may imply, the process is not linear and sequential. Some things necessarily need to happen before others, but if you expect to produce a detailed timeline (or worse, a Gantt Chart) right at the beginning mapping out every step and dependency until launch day in twelve months time, then you’re in for a rude awakening.

There are times when you need to open your mind and think divergently, and there are times when you need to focus down and think convergently.

There are feedback loops all over the place, small and large. From running quick experiments to test a particular product feature which may take place over a few hours, to the feedback loops that continually inform your thinking even years after launching your first product.

Towards selling

Selling your product comes at the end of the process but you need to think about that ahead of time. You should consider that in the early days when you’re looking at who your product is for.

In fact, it’s not even necessarily true that selling your product will be the last step — with crowdfunding you can sell your product before you’ve made it!

The product development process is like a journey where you decide where you’re heading, but you don’t have a detailed, accurate map. You do however have navigational skills, a compass, and there are people along the way to ask for directions.

Right from the outset you’ll need to balance creative and analytical thinking. That balance is a delicate one and will constantly be in flux as your project progresses. Worrying too much about the balance could slow you down terminally, which comes back to a key point: if in doubt, do something.

As I’ve said, it's OK to not know everything at this stage. In fact, if you think you do, then you’re probably be in for a fall.

A common concern I hear is about a lack of knowledge of specific things like manufacturing techniques, shipping or digital marketing. That shouldn’t stop you at this point - it’s inevitable that no one will have a detailed knowledge in all these areas. You can't plan and predict everything right from the outset, particularly if you're working on something new. And you’re not expected to do all of it on your own.

Not as difficult as you might think

It's easier than ever before to get a new product off the ground. In recent years we've seen so many more options open up for the would-be entrepreneur. As well as the host of web tools and services in areas like marketing and crowdfunding, there are ways to get a physical product off the ground that weren’t widely available even ten years ago - such as 3D printing and other rapid prototyping techniques.

Many would say that the odds are stacked against you. The statistics around new business failures don’t make encouraging reading. But there are ways you can minimise the risk of starting something new. You don't need to bet your house on your idea on day one. If you're going to fail, you can fail quickly and cheaply, and live to fight another day.

Don't be intimidated by the challenge and feel that you don't know what you're doing. The truth is: no one really knows what they're doing.

How to make a razor

So how did I figure out how to make a razor? I started with Google. I researched into how existing razors were made and then also bought a few of them to take apart and reverse-engineer.

Once I thought I knew what materials and manufacturing techniques I would need, I then searched for people to speak to about that. Specifically I was looking for places that did zinc diecasting so I found some people to talk to about that.

There’s a lot more to the story, and I’ll write about it in more detail another time, but in essence I just went step by step, filling in gaps in my knowledge as I went along.

Get started

If there's one thing you take away from reading this, it's to get started.

Start small and move quickly.

If in doubt, do something.

Nothing tangible will happen just by thinking about it.

…

Trying to build something out of nothing is deeply satisfying, and might not be as hard as you think.