Donald Trump just announced his official campaign song…..lol… It will play as entrance music for all his rallies and debates.

I remember my first varsity football game in high school. I was a junior  and we were playing Oak Lawn High School as the first game of the season. We were in the locker room getting ready for the game and our head coach came in at the time and was furious after he noticed a couple of the players decided not to wear the team socks. Instead, they decided to wear a pair of new Under Armour long tubed socks.

He brought the team together and chewed us out. I don’t remember much of what he said, but a small clip sticks with me up till this day.

“It’s the little things, like not wearing team socks, that will get you beat.”

I remember laughing on the inside….”There’s no way not wearing team socks will lose us this game. We’ll lose for other reasons but not team socks.”

We lost our season opener. We lost because we failed to play as a team against a pretty solid school.

That game serves an as a reminder the little things matter. Our minor  inability to coordinate as a team on socks that led to major malfunctions on the field, which led fewer stops defensively and less offensive conversions.

People forget to focus on the smaller, less glamorous things in life but they fail to realize that they’re missing out on big opportunities just by doing the little things.

What are the little things? Here’s a list:

• Returning phone calls or emails at a timely manner
• Taking the time out of your day to listen to someone
• Waking up a 30 minutes earlier than you need to
• 2 extra cups of water a day
• An extra text to tell someone you care about them
• A phone call to check on your clients

All of the above are small acts individually, but when combined, they change people’s perception of you and how you perceive those around you.

“It’s the little things that will get you beat.”

Cohort analysis…. helpful to understand how different groups of customers experience your product over time.

At the end of the day iron sharpens iron…. A healthy ecosystem gives software engineers the opportunity to spar, and get better together.

I’m a big fan of the lean start-up method. I’ve used it to shape my thinking about product builds and new enterprises. I’ve also joked around about how it’s easily applicable to situations and opportunities outside of business and technology. At its core, I believe the lean start-up method is best used in limited resource environments…which is most situations.

For example, I did a lot of traveling over the last couple of weeks. If you learn one thing about me, I consistently wait until the last-minute to fully pack before any trip, but there’s a method to my madness. I pack using the MVP (Minimum Viable Pack). I ask myself a week or two before I have to go, ” If my trip was tomorrow, what are the minimum items I need to have a successful trip?”. Most of the time, I end up packing my carry on bag before I get to my clothing. During this process, I play out each day’s set of activities and mentally prioritize how central they are to the core goal of the trip. I often go through the same exercise until I’m satisfied with my bags. I rarely over pack now.

The lean start-up method is a conceptual model that can apply to most situations. Do you have any examples where you applied lean start-up outside of business or technology? Please send them my way! I’ll definitely start brainstorming some on my end.