Rich and Paul are about to launch Aboard - the sponsor of this podcast. In this episode they discuss the expectations of entrepreneurs for launch, and how to navigate the dissonance between expectations and reality post-launch.

Well, I don't need any advice.

Rich

Billy Joel in an interview once said, me leaving Madison Square

Garden, which he's played at 5,000

Sure.

Me

leaving Madison Square Garden and getting in that limo is the

loneliest feeling in the world.

Mmm.

Yep.

It's very lonely.

Tell you when you want, when you wanna feel really lonely,

you just put on The Stranger.

On Vinyl.

Stranger's a good album.

is a good album.

It is a good album.

Yeah.

I don't know

what are you in such a good mood for?

Well, first of all, nothing is better for people than

hearing two middle-aged men talk about their love for Billy Joel albums.

That's,

not a huge Billy Joel fan, just to get

No stranger's good though.

And you're, I'm, I'm not either.

Okay.

So I'm, I'm really excited I'm coming to you today cuz I'm gonna

launch a website really soon.

Oh,

Oh, you've got a show coming at Madison Square

Oh, it's so great.

I'm gonna get out there.

Yeah.

I mean, Billy Joel, you know, he's had a lot of problems in life.

Not me.

I'm gonna want, we're gonna hit the big red button.

That thing's gonna be out there.

and

Everyone's gonna think I'm so smart and so great, and they're

gonna be like, good job, buddy.

And then it's just gonna succeed and millions of people are gonna use it.

And I, I'm just, I'm already seeing, I, I have, I have to revise my obituary in my

Just success

Oh, just, it's gonna be so great.

I love launching product products.

It's the greatest feeling in the world.

And once they go live, everybody just thinks that you're the best person ever.

It, it's nothing like that.

No, it isn't.

And I think that's what we should talk about today.

Let's do it.

All right, so launch.

We're about to launch a product.

are quietly now we're, it's gonna be for people who've signed up

to the mailing list, which I know everyone listening to the podcast has

aboard.com.

Put your email address in a really fun, cool tool for organizing

your passions@aboard.com.

I will say I love this thing.

I use it all day.

It has made the web better for me already and we're, we are getting started.

So let me get that outta the way.

We're launching a software product that I personally find useful and

interesting and that I, I like using.

So that's a good feeling.

get launched all the

Mm-hmm.

Uh,

plays

debut movies get released to theaters.

Albums are dropped.

That's the language to

They're all really successful.

books get released,

Oh boy.

um, and, uh, restaurants are opened.

Mm-hmm.

The restaurant analogy is a good one.

Uh,

restaurant and be really excited about how it's

let's spend some money on pr.

Okay.

I just hired a pr.

Pr I'm gonna spend

Whoa.

For a restaurant.

for.

It's a good restaurant.

Okay,

you're out.

You've got all kinds of press.

You're packed.

Everyone's

gonna try you out, especially if your lighting is good and you've got a good

stereo system and the plating is nice.

Yeah.

No, we need to name any completely random country,

Guatemala.

It's a Guatemala and gastropub.

I love a good ev.

You can take, you can throw a, a, a dart at the wall

Yeah.

Yeah.

as long as you don't hit Antarctica Yeah.

You can just put gastropub after it.

And Brooklyn will follow all over itself.

yes.

And so you open the restaurant.

Mm-hmm.

There's a lot of people there cuz you promoted the hell out of it.

You spent some money.

It's, it's Brooklyn's only Azer by Johnny and Gastropub,

And then two things happen.

Mm-hmm.

At our.

Mongolian

cover both.

We might need an extra podcast for this.

good.

We'll do two.

The first thing that happens is there is this messed up

thing your brain does to you where it tells you that when you launch

or open, that your work is done.

Oh, that's the worst.

And then it turns out nobody likes the spinach fritters

at your restaurant, or it turns out the labor behind one of your dishes

is four times longer than it needs to be, and it, and you're packed.

And so the work, instead of that moment of exhaling and just kicking back, which

by the way, let's put aside even the book getting released, the publisher's

like, all right now, Get going.

Go visits all the bookstores and the universities.

it all 15 years ago.

It's horrible, horrible

Dave sent you to work.

let me give you a metaphor.

I have, we've been, how long have, have we been working on our product?

Two and a half years.

Think, let me give you a shovel and you're gonna start digging

for two and a half How big of a, how big of a hole have you made?

Yeah.

And the dream of the launch is that, that you're gonna fill that hole in right away.

Well, first you're gonna get shot back out of it so you don't kill

You can, you can get out of the

gonna fill with gold bars,

Gold bars and dreams and love, and people, people who, and

then people are gonna understand your intent and be excited and motivated

Well, let's, I mean, let's, let's focus on, first off, that.

There's two things happening.

One is you just expect to be washed over with love and adoration.

Mm-hmm.

The other is you're sitting in a recliner as all that happens.

Neither of those things happen first.

There is no recliner.

For some reason, the work like quadruples on the other side.

side.

Go back.

Now that I'm done with my home metaphor, let's go back,

um, into, to the restaurant.

There's been a small kitchen fire.

The,

No, no.

Chef quit

the fire department, white shirts

times, three different chefs in the first six

Fire

department, white chefs need to do a walkthrough because

of the, the way your gas line

by

the way, the, the more intricate the sleeve tattoo, the more likely

they are to quit you in Brooklyn.

it is true.

You see a, and it's weird.

It'll be like, I went to culinary school, I have a neck tattoo,

and you're like, perfect.

Yeah.

And, and, and they won't quit because they'll, they'll quit

because you said something about the

They're artists.

they're artists, right?

All right, so chefs are

so, and actually, hold on.

We're talking about this as like restaurant owners slash co-founders.

Everyone who's been working towards the project has been part of digging the hole.

Everyone's been digging

And is really counting on that hole to like fill up really fast and,

and it's, you might think it's money.

I don't think it is actually.

I think no one expects like magical gold bars to rain from the sky.

I think what people expect is people will acknowledge and see the labor and

the energy and the, the sort of aspects of myself that I've put into this.

mm-hmm.

And they don't, and we've come back to this a

bunch of times in the podcast.

I, I'll skip ahead and what they see is themselves reflected and then they decide

if they like the reflection or not.

And that's software.

That's the restaurant.

That's the Azerbaijan gastro pub.

It's, it's all of

Is it a movie?

It is the movie.

You go to the movie and guy, I, I like the, why do we have critics in this world?

It's so that, that's, that's a person like

is.

That's a profound thing you're saying, which, you know, we could

end this podcast because it's so big, which is, uh, it isn't about

you, even though you are the creator.

this is the hardest, and it sounds like a like, oh, well, you

know, of course I'm not full of myself.

But you'd be amazed at how baked in the identification of yourself

with the things you do and put out into the world is, and until you've.

Just received the indifference of the world five or 6, 10, 15 times As that

slap across the face with the back of the hand, uh, it's really hard cuz you

really think, you're like, no, I get it.

I get it.

I'm gonna pace it.

And what I do now is I just sort of prepare for.

A little sense of gloom and, and anxiety on the other side of any launch date.

I, I, I think that's, I, I, I wouldn't say gloom.

Uh, I, I, I think recalibrating your expectations around how people are

gonna react, um, is really healthy and really smart because it could

crush you two and a half years.

Uh, and I hope the team, which is an amazing team at a board,

um, listens to this podcast and doesn't latch on like this.

Launch as judgment day of any sort.

Like that's not what it is.

First off, it won't be about you.

It will be about why it didn't work for them in their world, in their

kitchen, on their kitchen table.

May not have found the users yet,

whatever it is, right?

But the point is it can, I mean, you've worked on a movie for four years

and then you release it and it just, Hits like a, it was just a thud and

nobody, and it's just two stars every, nobody hated it, but nobody loved it.

No, your, your child went through puberty.

You weren't, you weren't home.

You were filming the movie.

crushing.

You know, I always think about the front row seats at the Academy Awards, like

they're very like just iconic actors and directors and producers, but also

the ones they think did the best work.

And I've seen that award ceremony where the, the.

The winner, the, the filmmakers got the front row seat but

never got up cuz they didn't win

Yes.

And I've seen it and it's a strange thing.

It's like, well I'm here, let me tell you something, just cuz you

got there and you got the front row.

The fact that you didn't win makes it all feel like a failure.

Right.

And that's just us and

Oh, I never look, everybody gets it.

Like you go home and you, you know, yell at somebody and

then you go like, I'm sorry.

I'm just upset.

It's a silly night.

It's stupid.

Whole thing.

Stupid.

And then you gotta go back and make another one.

and you gotta go back and make another one.

And so I think what you're saying here is such a big deal, which is you

think, let's focus on software for a, a

Mm-hmm.

Software is not a form of expression.

No.

It's a tool that people use to express themselves.

Exactly.

And when you make them feel powerful, and there are examples

of this where people feel smart,

Mm-hmm.

productive, powerful, knowledgeable, they then, then

they'll flatter your software and they'll become advocates for

it.

But until then,

well, then it becomes theirs.

It's not, it's not yours.

It's never yours.

That's the thing.

It's never great.

Great.

Software is appropriated.

Let me go back to something I said a little earlier cuz I think

it's a, the, the point I wanna make, and this is the advice part, right?

So prepare for the emotional release of launch.

I'm at a point in my career, you and I have worked together a long time.

I do not expect our launch day to actually be radically

different than many other days.

I'm gonna have to send about 20 emails to people, so I'm like, that'll be my job.

But, and I, you.

The reason I don't think I'm gonna feel very gloomy because I

actually we're on a good product.

We have a plan for post-launch.

We have a product roadmap after what

wanna

to do.

We are realistic about the fact that it's just this way.

Point in the journey of the thing.

and this is, people are definitely putting in more hours right

now, but we we're, we've worked hard not to burn everybody out, so it's

like we're gonna lean back in and just like everybody can take a breath and

then let's, let's get back to work.

And I think that that's a good feeling.

I'm looking forward to it.

The other thing too is, And this, this is the real advice cuz I've

done this and it's not great.

You can get a little gloomy or be like, well, you know, poof.

You know that's life.

Sometimes things work and sometimes they don't.

A little too early to tell, but Well boy, didn't quite

get a lot of response on this.

Now is not the moment for truthful irony.

Post-launch now is the moment to spackle the biggest 1942 Broadway show.

Smile on your face.

Yeah.

And say, I couldn't be more pleased with how this is going.

Team has worked so hard cuz there's a lot of people looking at you

going like, what do they think?

And what I think is, no matter what happens on that

launch day, this is a success.

Oh, that's a, I mean, it

is,

but it doesn't matter.

It doesn't matter what I feel.

doesn't matter what you feel.

That is what I'm saying, and I'm gonna retrofit my

beliefs to that emotional reaction.

Like, I'm gonna end up believing that, and that's gonna be

really good for the product.

me tack on a bonus piece of advice to your

Mm-hmm.

Which is,

is I think.

It, it's definitely a footnote cuz what you said was, was really big and profound

and requires you to put your ego aside, especially if you're an entrepreneur.

Like entrepreneurs do a really good job working out their egos,

Like they're very good at it.

Um, sort of little mini piece of advice next to which is

do not try to rationalize.

The lack of love or recognition by trying to explain away how everyone else got

it wrong or isn't understanding it.

The world.

not.

their fault.

The world is the world and everything.

You wanna be successful in business.

I'm gonna, here we go.

Here's the airport Hudson News business book.

Start up your own business book ready.

Everything is your fault.

mean, that's that.

I've been working with you for years.

You, you live it.

You believe it.

Everything is your fault.

especially when it comes to our relationship.

Absolutely.

No one wants to be told that, Hey, listen, that

I know you used to like that

you want to talk a launch

off the the burger, but a smaller one will be lower

for your cares cholesterol.

I sat on that drive through for 11 minutes.

You're gonna gimme a proper slice of cheese on

Rich, you want to know a business book that would fail upon lunch?

What that one?

It's the message that absolutely nobody wants to hear, right?

Everything is your fault.

Success is nothing other than navigating out of failure again and

again until you're away from it all.

Look, it's tricky, right?

Because at some level, launch is meaningless.

It is.

It is.

It's a story.

It's a story you're gonna tell and it's a change in the story.

And

we, we are, look, we're talking about software

mostly cuz that's what

are.

and, restaurants and gastro pubs.

launching a restaurant, Is very different than launching a, like

once you launch a movie and it's done and

you can't go back,

film, you kind of can't go back.

I've seen restaurants Bob and Weave

no, this is real.

Software is like a restaurant.

We can change the menu.

We can change the menu, you can change the signage.

There's a restaurant near us that, for whatever reason, I'm

not even sure why repaints the out storefront like every five months.

want to name it because, but like we, we go there first of every

time you and I go there, there's a major issue with HVAC and we're freezing.

and we, but the, the food is pretty good,

pretty good,

but they keep painting it.

They paint it yellow and then they don't heat it.

It's really upsetting.

it's upsetting, but I look credit to the man or the woman

who owns that restaurant for kind of

willing to, to just send the software patch out

over and over and over again now, and the users.

It's like getting, it's like Windows Vista updates that

kind of wild, And so unlike a movie, which you know, you

can't revise, you really can't revise

I mean, you can, you could do the director's cut, but that's only

if it was successful the first time.

They don't let you make,

directors don't.

You want some more?

They don't make like wild hogs too.

Director's cut.

Right.

Like,

Um, so it's, it's on you and, and just be forgiving what you're

saying and another way of saying what you're saying, which is for,

you know, just be a little forgiving for yourself and your team, right?

You're not gonna get it all right?

The world is crazy

Yes.

the world is gonna want what it wants.

Last bit of advice to that end, and then, then we'll, we'll, uh,

This is a three pack.

Three

Yeah.

Yeah.

Last bit of advice is upon launch, you'll receive an enormous amount of

feedback if you're lucky, and you should safely ignore all of the first wave.

because the first wave that comes in tends to be friends and family with

agenda and they kind of know the space and they have opinions and thoughts.

Those aren't your users.

Yeah.

Those are, those are people who mean well.

Yes.

And that is really different than your users.

Yes.

Your users are gonna shut stumbling later drunk and be like, why

does it, I don't, it's blue.

What?

And, and then you're gonna have to listen and figure out, out what they really want,

cuz they don't know what to tell you.

The person who can confidently tell you what they think should

come next is an absolute risk in the first couple of months.

It's a great point.

And you know, the, the pioneering UX designer Alan Cooper used

to say, users with ideas and feedback are far less valuable.

Then the observations you make of a user just using a thing quietly.

Right.

The phrase I use is monkey with a hammer.

You just wanna watch the monkey hit the thing with the hammer

Yeah.

Yes.

Then you see I'm monkey really is hitting it hard with a hammer.

Um, alright, so, so just to recap, get ready to be depressed.

Don't listen to anyone.

It's all your fault.

and it's all your fault.

So

Congratulations on your launch.

Yeah, you guys did a great job.

You're successful entrepreneurs.

Can't wait to see where this goes.

Um, Hit us up.

We are ziti and ford advisor ziti ford.com and at Zdi Ford on Twitter.

Subscribe wherever, uh, and check out a board our sponsor.

Uh, full disclosure, we are the founders of a board a board.com.

Sign up for the beta, you'll get access very soon.

I think everybody's okay with that ambiguity.

Uh, thanks everybody.

Yeah, get, get in there and in and really in like a couple weeks.

We're gonna wave you in.