In my “business childhood” I suffered from “optical illusions”: I saw business from the outside not the way it actually worked. Wrong priorities. Now I see that this is not just my disease.

Many believe, say, that if I sell search queries, I program from morning till night. What exactly is this process and is the “engine” of the business.

In fact, later you will not know (you already knew it, but did not attach importance to it), but you see in practice that the engine – advertising, communication. That each new “feature” is not a “plus” to the sale, as we would like. That the speed of work, the internal “steepness” of no one, by and large, do not care, although you spent a lot of time on it.

When I went on the market with my first product 8 years ago (before that I was exclusively engaged in services), I optimized advertising in Google AdWords from morning till night (see also secrets of google maps ). Although from the outside, probably, my project seemed absolutely software.

When I plan the next release, I understand that not the improvements themselves, but just an informational reason about their release – something that will ultimately increase sales. By and large, you can NOT change anything at all, just come up with new stories over and over again … but it’s not beautiful or ethical.

When I make something in a product, I clearly understand that it will not improve sales, but a DESCRIPTION of it in the sales letter. Which, by and large, is the result that depends on the words, not the code.

“Sick” of optical illusions a person can be seen immediately, from the first questions, from the first attempts to give “good advice”. Possession of a certain set of theoretical knowledge gives the illusion of practice – the disease of yesterday’s graduate.

Interestingly, EVERYONE understands “yesterday’s graduate’s illness”, but for some reason they are ashamed to try it on themselves when it comes to business 🙂