Welcome obscurity

No one knows who you are right now. And that's just fine. Being obscure is a

great position to be in. Be happy you're in the shadows.

Use this time to make mistakes without the whole world hearing about them.

Keep tweaking. Work out the kinks. Test random ideas. Try new things. No one

knows you, so it's no big deal if you mess up. Obscurity helps protect your ego

and preserve your confidence.

Retailers experiment with test markets all the time for this reason. When

Dunkin' Donuts thought about selling pizza, hot dogs, and other hot sandwiches,

it test-marketed the products at just ten select locations.

Broadway shows also provide a great example of testing ideas on a small

stage first. They routinely do a trial run in a smaller city before coming to New

York. Testing out of town lets actors get some reps in front of a live audience

before the show goes up in front of harsher critics and tastemakers.

Would you want the whole world to watch you the first time you do anything?

If you've never given a speech before, do you want your first speech to be in

front of ten thousand people or ten people? You don't want everyone to watch

you starting your business. It makes no sense to tell everyone to look at you if

you're not ready to be looked at yet.

And keep in mind that once you do get bigger and more popular, you're

inevitably going to take fewer risks. When you're a success, the pressure to

maintain predictability and consistency builds. You get more conservative. It's

harder to take risks. That's when things start to fossilize and change becomes

difficult.

If millions of people are using your product, every change you make will have

a much bigger impact. Before, you might have upset a hundred people when you

changed something. Now you might upset thousands. You can reason with a

hundred people, but you need riot gear to deal with ten thousand angry

customers.

These early days of obscurity are something you'll miss later on, when you're

really under the microscope. Now's the time to take risks without worrying about

embarrassing yourself.