Finishing What You Start
Growing up, it was easy for me to believe that an idea alone had real value. You’d hear people talk about intellectual property, protecting your ideas, and how someone had a “million dollar idea,” and it made ideas feel inherently precious. I’d have these exciting concepts and I’d watch other people succeed with what looked like simple ideas, and I’d think, I can come up with ideas like that too. But over time I started to see the devil in the details: execution is what makes an idea real, and once it’s real, nurturing and promoting it is the true key to success.
A big place where this misconception shows up is music. In so many biopics, bands come up with a catchy tune, someone important hears it, and suddenly they’re famous—as if great music alone is enough. I remember the movie Yesterday, where the Beatles are forgotten by the world except for one person, and he re-records their songs and immediately becomes internationally successful. But the more I thought about it, the more I felt that wouldn’t really happen. The Beatles were a point in time, with electrifying charisma and a handsome boy-band energy, plus they played for years in obscurity and worked extremely hard at their craft. That hard work doesn’t get the respect it deserves in a story like that, and it can give you the false impression that a good song is all you need. When I started making music, I’d write things that felt incredibly catchy, and I assumed the catchiness would be enough for them to catch on.
With my band Graveyard Fields, the songs really were incredibly catchy, and we consistently got a very positive audience reaction. We played a handful of shows that were met with real enthusiasm, and we recorded an EP of five songs. It’s one of those big “what-if” scenarios for me because we were just getting started—then Jonathan announced that he and Carol were going to have a baby and couldn’t play anymore. I dissolved the band. Looking back, I’m not sure that was the best move. We could have planned a hiatus, or I could have found a new guitar player and bass player. Instead, we gave up, and we didn’t get to see what success might have looked like.
Part of what fooled me was how deeply the songs resonated with me. When I wrote them, they would infect me—I couldn’t get them out of my mind. The melodies felt compelling, like they connected to my core being. And that points to another fallacy that applies to everything—books, products, businesses, software—this belief that if something resonates with you, it will naturally resonate with everyone else. Sometimes that’s true, but it’s not reliable. You really do need to market test, see what works, and refine your ideas based on what works for many people, not just what makes perfect sense in your own head.
That lesson has followed me in software too, which I’ve been writing for most of my life. I understand that marketing and promotion are critical, but they’re tedious, and it’s easy to get discouraged. Creation has a thrill: seeing something you envisioned become real is energizing. Release is often the opposite—slow, frustrating, and sometimes met with no uptake at all.
Back in my teens, I launched the Pangea software company to sell HyperCard stacks. I did some promotion, but when we didn’t see immediate success, I didn’t know how to take it further. Later in my 20s when I learned Java, I made the Musing drum software and promoted it some, but it didn’t take off either. In hindsight, it may have been too hard to understand; it made perfect sense to me, but the user interface was stygian—cryptic, at least—and that’s exactly where market testing would have helped.
All of this ties into a hard question I keep running into: when do you cut your losses? Sometimes an idea is simply bad, and it’s not worth the time, money, or effort to continue. But there’s also the sunk cost fallacy—once you’ve invested enough, it can feel impossible to stop. Billy and I watched Hear No Evil, See No Evil with Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder, and it was awful. There were a few giggles, but it made me wonder if at some point during production, someone realized it just wasn’t funny—like the seed of the idea seemed good, but the script was fundamentally boring, and no amount of comic genius could fix it. Yet the movie still got made.
The most serious version of “cutting losses” in my life wasn’t a project—it was my relationship with Meredith. It was never perfect from the beginning, but it had excellent moments, and there was love and caring. We formed a family together. Over the years, though, there was a disconnect that couldn’t be repaired, and eventually we decided to separate. It felt like the right decision, but it was incredibly serious because there was so much on the line: a family, and a difficult road ahead.
We went to a lot of therapy, and after one session we very amicably decided to separate. We even went out for a drink to celebrate the decision, and it felt like it was going to be smooth sailing. It turned out to have some rockiness, but years later Meredith and I are on good terms and we co-parent well. In recent years our messaging has become cordial and supportive. We share photos of the kids, we encourage each other, and the communication is relatively good. It’s nice.
When I zoom back out to the theme of sticking with projects, I can’t help wondering how many things might have turned out differently if I’d pushed through and kept up the promotion with regularity. Music is especially interesting in the internet era because it’s easier than ever to promote consistently on social media—photos, videos, blog posts, steady effort that slowly builds traction and a following. But it’s still difficult to keep up, and the early lack of feedback can be brutal.
A person who stands out to me as proof that persistence can pay off is Joshua Starmer. Josh and I have been friends since high school. He joined Graveyard Fields as a cellist, and even early on I could see his ability to stick with something because the cello is demanding and requires regular practice, and he stayed with it for a huge portion of his life. He told me something that stuck: people often come up to him and say, “When I was a teenager, I played cello, but I quit and I regret it.” And he said no one has ever come up to him and said, “I quit playing cello and it was the best decision of my life.”
Later, when Josh worked at a bioinformatics lab at UNC Chapel Hill, he found success teaching statistics. The lab projects didn’t always keep him busy, so he filled his time helping people learn, including making informative YouTube videos. His first video got nine views in its first year. But he kept going—video after video—putting in the same level of effort and improving over time. Eventually one caught on, about principal component analysis, and that led to more traction. He didn’t suddenly reinvent himself; he stayed consistent, got better and better, and the views kept climbing. Now he has well over a million subscribers and is on his way to two million. He’s written several books and travels the world for speaking engagements. He’s a true testament to sticking with something.
Seeing that kind of persistence has influenced me a lot. Another influence has been Steve Jobs. I remember reading Walter Isaacson’s biography and Jobs’s quote, “Real artists ship.” It’s cheesy, but I believe it’s true. If you don’t ship your product, you aren’t really an artist. If you don’t get the thing you made out into the world, you haven’t truly made anything.
Right now, I’m working on an AI-driven biography interviewer, inspired in part by that Steve Jobs biography. The idea is that it’s easier to talk conversationally and answer good follow-up questions than it is to write everything straight from memory. In fact, I’m using this software right now to tell this story. One insight I’ve gained from it is that I have more to say than I realized. When writing lyrics, I used to envy artists—especially hip-hop artists—because they seem to have so much to say. I’d approach a song thinking my life was boring and I didn’t have much to express. But regularly speaking my thoughts out loud and putting them down has shown me that I actually do have a lot to say.
If I had to wrap it up, I don’t know that I have neat advice so much as a set of hard questions I keep returning to: which ideas do you turn into reality, which of those do you promote and try to make successful, and what signs do you use to decide you should keep going? People say “do what you love,” and I think that love is often the only energy source you’ll have in a world where there’s usually no encouragement and, for an uncomfortably long time, no financial gain. So do what you love, and stick with it longer than you initially want to—because producing things and seeing them to completion is its own reward. I’ve finished projects I never expected to finish, and those completed works—especially musical ones—have been deeply rewarding to revisit later.
A big place where this misconception shows up is music. In so many biopics, bands come up with a catchy tune, someone important hears it, and suddenly they’re famous—as if great music alone is enough. I remember the movie Yesterday, where the Beatles are forgotten by the world except for one person, and he re-records their songs and immediately becomes internationally successful. But the more I thought about it, the more I felt that wouldn’t really happen. The Beatles were a point in time, with electrifying charisma and a handsome boy-band energy, plus they played for years in obscurity and worked extremely hard at their craft. That hard work doesn’t get the respect it deserves in a story like that, and it can give you the false impression that a good song is all you need. When I started making music, I’d write things that felt incredibly catchy, and I assumed the catchiness would be enough for them to catch on.
With my band Graveyard Fields, the songs really were incredibly catchy, and we consistently got a very positive audience reaction. We played a handful of shows that were met with real enthusiasm, and we recorded an EP of five songs. It’s one of those big “what-if” scenarios for me because we were just getting started—then Jonathan announced that he and Carol were going to have a baby and couldn’t play anymore. I dissolved the band. Looking back, I’m not sure that was the best move. We could have planned a hiatus, or I could have found a new guitar player and bass player. Instead, we gave up, and we didn’t get to see what success might have looked like.
Part of what fooled me was how deeply the songs resonated with me. When I wrote them, they would infect me—I couldn’t get them out of my mind. The melodies felt compelling, like they connected to my core being. And that points to another fallacy that applies to everything—books, products, businesses, software—this belief that if something resonates with you, it will naturally resonate with everyone else. Sometimes that’s true, but it’s not reliable. You really do need to market test, see what works, and refine your ideas based on what works for many people, not just what makes perfect sense in your own head.
That lesson has followed me in software too, which I’ve been writing for most of my life. I understand that marketing and promotion are critical, but they’re tedious, and it’s easy to get discouraged. Creation has a thrill: seeing something you envisioned become real is energizing. Release is often the opposite—slow, frustrating, and sometimes met with no uptake at all.
Back in my teens, I launched the Pangea software company to sell HyperCard stacks. I did some promotion, but when we didn’t see immediate success, I didn’t know how to take it further. Later in my 20s when I learned Java, I made the Musing drum software and promoted it some, but it didn’t take off either. In hindsight, it may have been too hard to understand; it made perfect sense to me, but the user interface was stygian—cryptic, at least—and that’s exactly where market testing would have helped.
All of this ties into a hard question I keep running into: when do you cut your losses? Sometimes an idea is simply bad, and it’s not worth the time, money, or effort to continue. But there’s also the sunk cost fallacy—once you’ve invested enough, it can feel impossible to stop. Billy and I watched Hear No Evil, See No Evil with Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder, and it was awful. There were a few giggles, but it made me wonder if at some point during production, someone realized it just wasn’t funny—like the seed of the idea seemed good, but the script was fundamentally boring, and no amount of comic genius could fix it. Yet the movie still got made.
The most serious version of “cutting losses” in my life wasn’t a project—it was my relationship with Meredith. It was never perfect from the beginning, but it had excellent moments, and there was love and caring. We formed a family together. Over the years, though, there was a disconnect that couldn’t be repaired, and eventually we decided to separate. It felt like the right decision, but it was incredibly serious because there was so much on the line: a family, and a difficult road ahead.
We went to a lot of therapy, and after one session we very amicably decided to separate. We even went out for a drink to celebrate the decision, and it felt like it was going to be smooth sailing. It turned out to have some rockiness, but years later Meredith and I are on good terms and we co-parent well. In recent years our messaging has become cordial and supportive. We share photos of the kids, we encourage each other, and the communication is relatively good. It’s nice.
When I zoom back out to the theme of sticking with projects, I can’t help wondering how many things might have turned out differently if I’d pushed through and kept up the promotion with regularity. Music is especially interesting in the internet era because it’s easier than ever to promote consistently on social media—photos, videos, blog posts, steady effort that slowly builds traction and a following. But it’s still difficult to keep up, and the early lack of feedback can be brutal.
A person who stands out to me as proof that persistence can pay off is Joshua Starmer. Josh and I have been friends since high school. He joined Graveyard Fields as a cellist, and even early on I could see his ability to stick with something because the cello is demanding and requires regular practice, and he stayed with it for a huge portion of his life. He told me something that stuck: people often come up to him and say, “When I was a teenager, I played cello, but I quit and I regret it.” And he said no one has ever come up to him and said, “I quit playing cello and it was the best decision of my life.”
Later, when Josh worked at a bioinformatics lab at UNC Chapel Hill, he found success teaching statistics. The lab projects didn’t always keep him busy, so he filled his time helping people learn, including making informative YouTube videos. His first video got nine views in its first year. But he kept going—video after video—putting in the same level of effort and improving over time. Eventually one caught on, about principal component analysis, and that led to more traction. He didn’t suddenly reinvent himself; he stayed consistent, got better and better, and the views kept climbing. Now he has well over a million subscribers and is on his way to two million. He’s written several books and travels the world for speaking engagements. He’s a true testament to sticking with something.
Seeing that kind of persistence has influenced me a lot. Another influence has been Steve Jobs. I remember reading Walter Isaacson’s biography and Jobs’s quote, “Real artists ship.” It’s cheesy, but I believe it’s true. If you don’t ship your product, you aren’t really an artist. If you don’t get the thing you made out into the world, you haven’t truly made anything.
Right now, I’m working on an AI-driven biography interviewer, inspired in part by that Steve Jobs biography. The idea is that it’s easier to talk conversationally and answer good follow-up questions than it is to write everything straight from memory. In fact, I’m using this software right now to tell this story. One insight I’ve gained from it is that I have more to say than I realized. When writing lyrics, I used to envy artists—especially hip-hop artists—because they seem to have so much to say. I’d approach a song thinking my life was boring and I didn’t have much to express. But regularly speaking my thoughts out loud and putting them down has shown me that I actually do have a lot to say.
If I had to wrap it up, I don’t know that I have neat advice so much as a set of hard questions I keep returning to: which ideas do you turn into reality, which of those do you promote and try to make successful, and what signs do you use to decide you should keep going? People say “do what you love,” and I think that love is often the only energy source you’ll have in a world where there’s usually no encouragement and, for an uncomfortably long time, no financial gain. So do what you love, and stick with it longer than you initially want to—because producing things and seeing them to completion is its own reward. I’ve finished projects I never expected to finish, and those completed works—especially musical ones—have been deeply rewarding to revisit later.