Those who know me, know I’ve taken on a new motto in the last few years: Work hard, play hard. 💪
That’s a pretty big change from how I used to be, which was work. All. The. Time.😬 Rather than all work and no play, I’m trying to get more life back into my life.
And, for me, this equates to more time spent doing my favorite pastime 👉 Overlanding.
What’s Overlanding, you ask? For those who don’t know, it’s a form of off-roading, except it’s more focused on the journey and exploration. It’s all about self-reliance while navigating difficult terrain in a vehicle equipped for camping, cooking, and sleeping.🚙
The thing about Overlanding is it’s a lot like running a startup. You have good days, bad days, straightforward days, and challenging days. It’s fun and exhilarating, while at the same time rigorous, bumpy, and characterized by the great unknown.
On my latest Overlanding trip, I realized that I approach my excursions much like how I approach our development process at Charli: Taking note of what works, what doesn’t, and adjusting along the way.
For instance, during each trip, I constantly make a mental note of how I navigated technical challenges, how the trailer handled, what gear worked and what gear didn’t:
✅ Did I take the right line and how did the Jeep and trailer respond on the rocks or off-camber transitions?
✅ Did I forget anything as this could make for an uncomfortable night on the trail?
✅ Did the gear I pack work for cooking or staying warm overnight?
✅ Do I need to switch up any gear, add gear, or remove gear?
Rather than wait until the end of the season to evaluate this, I do it repeatedly throughout each day of the trip. It’s a constant process of learning and iteration. And I started to enjoy it.
I even enjoyed the “oh sh@# … that didn’t work” moments. And I had one of those recently where I needed a shovel, hi-lift jack and chainsaw to get my Jeep out of a bad spot.😓🧐🧰. A little bit of shameless pride when I was back on the trail. 💪🙂
Mental notes on the trail eventually became real notes and real notes became action. I switched up my gear to improve the rhythm on my trips. Sleeping bags changed, bags changed, cookware changed and recovery gear changed. I even switched from a Rooftop Tent to an off road trailer because of this exact process. A lot of the changes can be seen in the picture above.
This is much like how we operate at Charli. Rather than wait until the end of a sprint, we try to take stock of where we’re at every single day. The runway is so short for a startup, so it’s critical to stay sharp, engaged, and ready to pivot on a dime. We talk to users every day, we use our own product every day and we re-think our priorities and challenges every day.
I’ve seen so many companies that get into a comfortable cadence with the development Sprints that they burn through cash before they know it. They evaluate their position too late and fail to adjust quick enough. The example I explained to our team at Charli was that a 2-week Sprint meant that we couldn’t see the impact of a change for at least 6 weeks. A 4-week Sprint would have pushed that out to 3 months.
The runway for any startup is short, extremely short, and 6 weeks or 3 months is an eternity.
Similar to Overlanding, it’s a constant learning process and involves an iterative mindset. But keep in mind that iterative is NOT Agile Sprints. Iterative is your company immediately evaluating and responding to the right feedback from the right customers and users.
What you thought might work, or where you thought you’d end up, isn’t always the way it plays out.
And that’s ok.
If you focus carefully on the journey, the destination will come.
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Stay tuned for Part II, coming soon!