Fishing with Strawberries: on Tim O’Reilly
Tim O’Reilly is the CEO and founder of O’Reilly Media, the publisher that has printed all three of my books. He’s a high profile guy and gets written about often, but this week there’s finally a piece in Inc. that does the special thing of capturing someone I’ve had the pleasure of hanging out with a couple of times over the years. I don’t know him that well, but it’s so rare someone you’ve met gets written about in a way that reflects the person you know.
One favorite part of the article is an old story Tim told. Years ago, O’Reilly Media was looking to find partners for an early Internet venture. Bob Broadwater, an investment banker, gave them the following advice.
“You don’t fish with strawberries. Even if that’s what you like, fish like worms, so that’s what you use.”
And Tim, in a short essay, explained:
That’s really good advice for any sales situation: understand the customer and his or her needs, and make sure that you’re answering those needs. No one could argue with such sound, commonsense advice.
At the same time, a small voice within me said with a mixture of dismay, wonder and dawning delight: “But that’s just what we’ve always done: gone fishing with strawberries. We’ve made a business by offering our customers what we ourselves want. And it’s worked!”
And in my own career I’ve thought much about these things, and I’m convinced they’re not mutually exclusive. Often in writing I’m aiming for Strawberries. This is the driving motivation in many of my essays: I simply wish someone else had written these things so I could read them. I feel there is a question or answer that should be out there, but isn’t, so I go and make it, and feel satisfaction when I do. Even if no one else cares, I feel like I solved a problem and filled a microscopic void in the universe.
But the ones I tend to publish are those that I sense, based on experience, there are many people who would want to read them. And to run the above metaphor into gross oblivion, this would be fishing with strawberry flavored worms, or worm flavored strawberries, which sounds awful and disgusting, but demonstrates there can be creative ways to satisfy yourself and others at the same time. There can be 80% worm and 20% strawberry, or 50% or 50%, or a hundred different breakdowns of how much you are thinking about you and how much you’re thinking about your customer, or reader.
If I know you, or have a sense of you, I can find the sweet spot between what you like and what I like and spend time there.
To only make strawberries makes you an artist. And to only make worms makes you a capitalist. To make both at the same time, or some of one now and then some of the other later, perhaps makes a successful artist. Or an artistic capitalist. Or in Tim’s case, it means you’re having a successful life that has helped people like me make successful lives, and perhaps that’s the best kind of fishing of all: fishing that helps other people learn to fish.
Thank you, Scott. I am currently thinking deeply about ways in which to build my freelance business. My goal is to share something that interests me in such a way that it is of value to other people. Sometimes it’s a matter of packaging your material in a way that works for other people. Sometimes it’s letting your potential audience know that you are there. And it’s a matter of constantly striving to understand your audience and help them satisfy their needs.
Love this! How fun! I wish more people tried to figure out their balance between strawberries and worms, rather than accepting, often, a mostly worm-filled life.
Thanks Scott,
The fundamental problem with the banker’s analogy is that people are not fish, so of course their preferences will be different. Tim probably realized that his market has similar tastes to his own, so “fishing with strawberries” works.
The real lesson is for the banker (VCs, etc.): your customers are people, and they likely have the same needs and desires as you do.
Do what you love, serve others, and you’ll be fine.
When you come over I’m making this: http://bit.ly/9wLurv
As an artist and writer I like to take strawberries and worms and find a way to combine them in just such a way as to be more interesting than either just strawberries or just worms.
Definitively both approaches are correct and need to be balanced. Of course we need to think in terms of other people’s interests, get to know them and deliver the products and services they need. On the other hand though if someone asked people in say the 60s whether they want a computer at home, they’d probably say no. If someone asked people in 2001 whether they want another MP3 player, we wouldn’t have iPods. Herman Miller Aeron – same story. iPad?
Many times people don’t know they want something until they see it, or until they see other people having and using it. That’s fishing with strawberries.
thats such a neat metaphor-Scott,
tara
Being a strawberry addict, I definitely appreciated the comparison between using strawberries and worms to fish! However, I think that you’d have more chances to sell me with strawberries than fish: I always need to get what other’s don’t ;)
Nice article; very honest and hard hitting. Just to make it clear, I prefer to fish with worm flavored worms. Its because that is what the fish like but I get to decide what kind of fish I lure using the worms. I freelance on this great new website called Skillocracy.com. Its fast becoming a busy marketplace for business owners and freelancers and I always choose which business owner I work with. I don’t keep just the project or financial stakes as a yard stick but also the reputation of the client. The work is totally defined by him/her with no ifs or buts from my end.
Between strawberries and worms, don’t forget the rod. That is the place where everythings hangs on.