Take it from Eddie Izzard – Quality is more important than Speed

Over the break I read Eddie Izzard’s excellent ‘Believe Me, a memoir of love, death and jazz chickens‘. Bill Gates, of all people, had recommended it as a top read, and I thought ‘now why would a serious bloke like Mr Gates be into the autobiography of an English cross-dressing comedian?’

Then I reached page 306, which I quote from heavily below.

Eddie Izzard was born a year before me, and was packed off to an English  private boarding school aged 6 after his mother died suddenly of cancer. He grew up with the same TV shows and music as I remember from the early 70s, and went to uni around the same time (although he dropped out to pursue his dream of performing).

As a teenager, while still at school, he decided one day to take a bus and a pay a visit – uninvited – to Pinewood Studios, just west of London (where they made James Bond movies and the like) walking right through the side door and exploring around all day pretending to be busy and part of things.

During his ‘lost decade’ of the 1980s he took various failed shows up to Edinburgh Fringe, then spent a few years as a street performer before finally getting into stand up. He explored and created, and slowly honed his craft. He put on shows himself, producing them from scratch and co-writing inventive nonsense with friends. Most of it simply did not work, but slowly he found his own voice and style and confidence and audience.

From the 1990s his stand up act took off and then he made it into films and TV. Now, in his mid 50s, looking back, his advice for creating new business is crystal clear …

“When I was 25, the direction of my career suddenly became shaped by my ‘Field of Dreams’ rule – if you build it, they will come. ‘It’ being quality and imaginative shows.

“Previously, this had not been my thinking. Quality was not high on my list. Speed was. But who the hell cares if you get somewhere fast? The only person who cares is you. 

“If you could get somewhere faster, then you’d just have a lot of money, a big house, a fast car and a big cat. The individual is the one who wants to get somewhere quickly. It’s what you want when you’re young. At nineteen I thought I would begin to cut through within a few years, but this was not the case. At 25 I was racing to get somewhere fast but getting nowhere.

“So I turned the plan upside down: don’t get somewhere as fast as possible. Get somewhere as good as possible.

“No one ever says, ‘This piece of creative work is crap, but it was made in a couple of weeks, so let’s go check it out.’ Contrariwise, no one ever says, ‘Now, this piece of creative work took 10 years to make and a lot of care and attention – so I must check it out because it took so long to make.’

“There is something fun about a fast trajectory, someone’s career taking off quickly. It’s all about the wind in their sails. But in the end, you want your work to last. And to do that, your work must be good…

“(My career) took 12 years to appear, and to me it felt like a bloody eternity… there was something I had to learn. It was stamina. And it was also the idea of quality over speed.“

There is an eternal truth in this passage.

Do your best work, not your quickest work. It might take time. In fact, if you’re doing something new, wacky and disruptive, it will definitely take time. More time than you’d like. But in the end, only the best work wins. Keep plugging away, find your audience, keep innovating.

This experience and advice has obvious crossover to business and particularly startups. I think I can see why Bill Gates admires Mr Izzard.