I’ve always been enamoured with creators who inspire us. As a product manager, I love to create exceptional experiences. I marvel at the leaders and teams who create truly inspirational things. One day, I was on Quora and went down the rabbit hole on this topic. One question in particular caught my interest:
What do the top 1% of software engineers do that the other 99% do not?
What an interesting question, I felt this was related to my search and there were already some answers to read. One answer in particular caught my eye, made me pause, and has stayed with me ever since reading it. Brian Knapp’s answer may be the catalyst that made Bootstrap Digital Group come to be.
Brian went over some superficial similarities he had observed in top 1% engineers, but then cleverly ties it all together for the reader:
They are always building something. Not just at work. Outside of work too. Always building.
It made perfect sense to me. We all know someone who is a workaholic, loves their work and team, and is just so good at what they do. They inspire us. Brian’s answer, along with some choice words I’d heard from another inspirational leader, started to hit me. I love to create, I love what I do, why couldn’t I do the same? If I could, then what’s stopping me from being a top 1% product manager? Hold that thought for a minute longer.
Starting back in 2015, in addition to my full time roles, I would do some side work for a friend of mine from time to time. I would get development help through a team I found, which is an entirely different post for another time. For 2020, my friend had a new project for us, the biggest we had undertaken yet. It involved creating a new app on an entirely new platform I had never used before. We would need to migrate over the company’s entire CRM database, going back 10 years. It would need to accept new orders, generate invoices, report, search, all the features expected from a company CRM. My friend was counting on us because we would always stand by our work, and he trusted nobody else. As a career salary employee with a great full time role that was already rewarding and challenging, did I want to take on another challenge for my nights and weekends? As I considered, Brian’s answer kept echoing in my mind.
You can guess how it ended. With that project, we officially started Bootstrap Digital Group. This group allows me and other professionals to, “be always building something” which admittedly has sharpened my skills. Now, there are other reasons Bootstrap Digital Group was started and has taken the format it has, but we’ll also save that story for another time. If you want to read more about those who inspire me most, I wrote an article on mixedwiki.com you might be interested in. Please comment or share if this post inspired you.
