The Right Path Is The Right Path When You Decide It’s The Right Path

Two days ago my boys were playing with the little kid’s putting green we’ve got in our living room. Their variation is to whack each other with the putter until, against all odds, the ball goes into the hole, at which point they celebrate like they just won the showcase showdown on Price is Right. I know that’s an old-timey reference but that’s what it looks like.

This brings us to yesterday, when my younger son somehow broke free of my wife’s grip while she was changing his diaper and sprinted to the putting green where he peed directly into the hole while cackling like a mad man. It was too choreographed to have been spur of the moment.

There’s an old saying about comedy that something is funny when you decide it’s funny. When it happened, my naked son sprinting around peeing on things and juking us like a kid who’d had 11 beers and then jumped on the field during a game at Yankee Stadium wasn’t funny at all. There was pee everywhere, a kid without a diaper, and a putting green that needed to be washed, somehow.

But, at some point, my wife and I decided it was a funny story and then it became a funny story. Once you make that decision, it’s easy to find the funny things and frame the story. One of the better qualities you can have in life is deciding that something objectively unfunny is funny.

Now, startup stuff.

You’re going to spend a bunch of time trying to figure out who, say, your first customer is. You’ll spend a bunch of time debating whether this customer segment you’ve got in mind is the perfect customer, the best one you can start with. Whether this pain they feel is actually real or the market is actually big enough or if your idea is differentiated enough from competitors.

As good approach as any is to, at some point, just decide the customer is the right customer. That the path is the right path.

Because it’s very unlikely you’ll have enough insight to know if a thing is right or wrong before you decide it’s right and treat it that way. You’ll need to commit to realize you were wrong. Nibbling around the edges never got anyone anywhere.

It’s very possible that you’ll decide the path is the path and then you’ll realize the path wasn’t the path. That’s ok. That’s all part of it. It’s the only actual way to figure it out, and it isn’t a waste of time.

Most of these decisions aren’t obvious when you hit them. If they were, the opportunity wouldn’t exist. Capitalism is efficient.

If you think your customer might be a good customer, that’s usually good enough. Your job is then to act like they’re the best customer in the world - until they show you they aren’t (if they ever do).

A story is funny when you decide it is, and the right path is the right path when you decide it is.