WWPC: The End

Back in my hotel room, WWPC is done with and I have a folder full of notes, project ideas, business goals and improvement plans that will take years to implement.

As you head back home and are waiting for your delayed flight I offer this bit of advice: be patient. I know you are probably excited, exilirated, with what you have learned from Microsoft and from your partners and you want to move as fast as humanly possible. Microsoft is innovating, pages and pages of new products in 2008, so naturally you’ve got to move quick? Yes? Yes? No. Nope. Stop, hold on, wait a minute, throw out an anchor and step back. In the information and tip overload that WWPC is, its easy to take the lessons learned and rush to quickly implement them – after all, they seem so simple – you can do it next week! The trick is not getting it implemented, quickly, it’s making sure that the changes you do committ to your business stick with it for years to come. It’s something you take to another conference and ask other partners “Hey, thinking about doing XYZ, any ideas or suggestions?”

Some of the best decisions and implementations I’ve used to make my business successful were not quick fixes, tips or rushes to market. They were things that were planned, tested, evaluated, trialed and proven. They took a lot of work, a lot of careful planning and execution. So as you head back home bright eyed feeling like your life has fundamentally been changed remember that you’re not by yourself, that there is a lot of adoption that needs to happen internally and externally, that you have to prepare for it before you pull the trigger. Be patient, great things take time to happen, if they are happening seemingly overnight they are likely not thought through enough. Let go of the impulse and focus on what got you to this point to begin with.