Hey guys,
As 2017 is nearing to an end, I thought I should wrap up my learnings about business (marketing, sales) and personal development (productivity mostly) in a small post! In 2017 I launched my startup and follow every day the advices written here.
1. Seek the best possible outcome, instead of perfection.
In other rights "stop seeking to be right" or for business "Take the shortest possible path to deliver value to customers". I realised there is a greater advantage in seeking the best outcome in every situation instead of finding the perfect solution.
A few examples:
- You launch a product that provides 80% of what customers want in one week vs. You launch a product that provides 100% of what customers want but it will take you 12 months. Which one do you choose?
- You need to make 100 cold emails and know they will be perfect but it will take you one day vs. explaining it to someone else which might not do as it as perfectly as you but it will only take you 5 minutes to explain.
2. Ship every day... and put a deadline on it.
This one is for those being stuck in "analysis paralysis" which is a symptom of many entrepreneurs. We want to make it perfect, we want to "wait" for this or that to be done first. NO. Just ship it, BRO! Whether it is a small feature, a bug fix, talking to new customers... Just keep that momentum going. It will make you more motivated and yield compounded returns over the long term.
Next to that, what works for me best to ensure I ship is to make it actionable and attach deadline into it (example: "Talk to 10 customers today and find out what their pain-points are with my product and summarise it by tonight."
A few examples:
- Email 50 potential new customers about services and understand what they need the most before this afternon.
- Send instructions to employee on how to do X, Y, an Z before 12 today.
3. Be accountable.
Imagine you are on a runnning track and everybody is watching vs. you are racing alone in the woods. What would push you more?
Every morning on Skype I write to my business partner the top 3-5 things I will work on today and make him an update in the evening on what was done. You can also use Whatsapp, or whatever works best for you. I would be happy to add you on Skype and be your productivity buddy :-)
** A few examples:**
- "Man, I am going to talk to 100 customers today".
- Business partner: "Good luck. I am going to code features X, Y, and Z and also talk to existing customers to tell them how they want those features to exactly be".
- "... I only talked to 98 customers today"
- Business partner: "Talk to 200 tomorow".
4. Read the evergreen stuff on business... and summarise it.
One of the most important skill as an entrepreneur is to build yourself. One part of building yourself is to build your knowledge and you usually do that by doing as well as reading other stuff. I would be extremely picky on what to read, and how to retain that knowledge.
My takeaways on this are:
- Stop reading "marketing tactics" and other jargon blog posts. Build elementary wisdom in marketing, strategy, economics, finance. Just build a strong foundation and attach knowledge over time to it.
- Write about the stuff you have read / learnt and share it to others. Maybe even start a small blog and write a post along the lines of "Here are some evergreen marketing techniques I have learnt this year". Even if no one reads it, it will help you spot your blurry areas of knowledge.
5. Leverage yourself, your team, your money, your business.
As cliché as it may sounds, my favourite quote is from Archimede is: "Give me a place to stand, and I shall move the world" I absolutely love the concept of leverage because you can apply it in many areas of business (hiring, finance).
A few examples:
- Instead of buying its own buildings, WeWork leveraged its strong brand to fill in offices.
- Instead of trying to find the perfect solution to hire that perfect employee who is too expensive, find common grounds and leverage what you can do to work together.
And you Reddit, what did you learn in 2017?
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