Stoa Digest 112 : 🎯 Hit or Miss 🎯

You waste years by not being able to waste hours.

Aug 22, 2023

Hey Stoans,

Today, I want to talk about the process of trial and error and the impact it can create in our lives both professionally and personally. While experimentation has proven to be a great source of guidance toward an end goal, it can sometimes get overlooked.

Let me put this into perspective with an experience of my own - I got into music production in high school and the early days of my journey were filled with pure experimentation with sounds and genres. I slowly started to combine these sounds into what I thought was a hit song but was far from it. Eventually, I started to learn more by practicing my craft and approaching each creative process with a framework of trial and error.

There was this one instance where I finished a song that I felt had great potential but was unsure and confused about releasing it. So I thought to myself - How do I do it? And how do I do it the right way? 🤔

I had released music in the past and tried multiple marketing strategies to increase my reach but it hardly ever worked in my favour. So this time around, I tried something new by collaborating with a promotion agency to market my release.

But guess what, this too did not work well the first time around!

However, it did show some promise so I dug deeper to find more such agencies to partner with and finally found one that did wonders with the song. I literally went through more than 10 agencies and spent quite a bit on promotions over 6 months but it was worth it. 💯

Now, I’m sure you would have worked on multiple business problems in your workplace and in Stoa where you would have attempted to solve them in a certain way, assessed the approach, and then refined it to finally reach an ideal solution.

For instance, you work with your team on a case study. You get cracking to create a solution that feels right but then your teammate discovers data that contradicts your solution. Now you’re forced to go back to the drawing board and re-work with a different approach. This is trial and error, a process where you get to test your idea out with different elements and strategies to finally execute it in the best way possible.

This process ideally allows the market to become your teacher.

An idea can only be successfully executed when you have concrete and trustworthy data to back it up and the best way to gather this data with low stakes at play is to use a trial-and-error strategy to help iterate various parts of your idea and execution.

Pro-tip: Make sure that for any decision you make, your positive outcomes vastly outweigh the negative ones. ➕

So don’t be afraid to test the waters and iterate along the way. Feel no shame in not knowing and appearing clueless for that is when you leave space for growth and improvement.

~ Adi, Team Stoa

🫡 People of Stoa 🫡

Check out a new drop on our YouTube featuring Ayushi Bhan from C11 sharing her experience of being a sales professional! 💸

🔥 Community Sneak Peak 🔥

Presenting the #3 episode of our Fireside Chats series, with Anurag Ranjan, Director @Delhivery. Know more about operations and project management across industries on Wednesday, 23rd August, 9 PM onwards.