Don’t Fake it Till You Make It
Yesterday on Blab, @guygal and @gregisenberg were talking about their favorite “life hacks”.
As they were telling a story about how they met interesting people & got traction for their startup, a young founder watching the Blab commented:
“nice! fake it till you make it!”
@guygal could have let it slide — but he decided to drop some knowledge:
“No!” don’t fake it till you make it. Don’t fake it. Just make it.” — @guygal
Immediately, I replaced the old phrase in my head with a better one:
Make it till you make it.
The valley tends to glorify stories of hackers & hustlers. AirBnB scraping craigslist to fill up their listings, Chris Sacca digging his way out of debt by going to meetups & handing out business cards with the fictional Salinger Group.
Don’t get me wrong, I love AirBnB, and Sacca is a great guy. But the phrase “fake it till you make it” doesn’t do them justice.
What they did is not fake. They aren’t fakers, talkers, or posers. They are people who made shit happen.
The stories in the media tend to focus on the 10% “faking it” instead of the 90% “making it”. It doesn’t matter what you make. You can make products, make friendships, make deals, make an effort, make an impact. Just focus energy on making things happen, not faking that they’ve happened.
Sacca’s fake business card is irrelevant. The fact that he stayed up every night writing business plans, contracts, and consulting for startups is what got him out from a multi-million dollar debt hole. How many people have that kind of resolve to grind every day for years?
I think @guygal is right. Language is powerful, and the idea of faking it till you make it is celebrating being a poser.
Build more. Blog more. Help more.
Just BE MORE, to MORE PEOPLE every day — and watch yourself become the person you want to be, instead of pretending you’re something you’re not.
Don’t fake it till you make it. Make it till you make it.
