Change the Cover

In 2013, I learned that over the past six months, 5 million pieces of work had been uploaded to Slideshare, the website on which people share presentations, info-graphics and reports.

Six out of these 26 weeks, one of my works was the #1 most popular Slideshare. Those are pretty long odds, and I tell you this not to brag but to share my “secret.”

When an idea didn’t work, I changed the cover. That is, if I uploaded a presentation and it did not get many views, I reworked the cover image and the title. In some cases, I changed them five times on a single presentation.

I’m brutally honest with myself and don’t fall in love with my own ideas. The Web enables you to see results in real time. If I don’t see a marked difference in a few hours time, I consider the revision a failure, and try again.

I do this with articles, white papers, and book proposals, too. There are some ideas that I have literally spent ten years twisting and turning, trying to make them work.

My “secret” is simple: I keep making changes until my idea actually helps other people.