I’m sick today.
So I can stop feeling guilty about taking time off, I have been using the day to catch up on talks while cleaning my apartment.
I’m feeling inspired having finished a session on ‘iterating’ with Buildspace, an online school to work on your own ideas. They call it the ‘Hogwarts for builders and dreamers’. It’s pretty apt given that we each choose and earn points for our houses.
I wanted to write about my core takeaway this week to help me remember it. For anyone looking to write, this is something I learned early on: It’s a lot easier to write as soon as you notice an idea form in your mind. If you wait too long, you’ll lose the inspiration.
Core takeaway: It’s not that deep
When you’re trying to build something, it’s easy to overcomplicate what you do. A friend of mine, for example, is trying to build an online community. Every time we catch up, she’s working on something completely different. She’s building a social media following, working on a pitch deck, building features for her platform and searching for a cofounder.
I’m guilty of this all the time. I’m often moving in many different directions rather than narrowing my focus on a handful of clear objectives. (See the end of this post for a perfect example of this...)
But, as Farza explained in his talk, growing whatever you’re doing doesn’t need to be that complicated, even though we like to overcomplicate it. Put simply, what you need to do when starting out is:
Pick a metric you want to focus on (e.g. increase revenue or users) over a time period
Run experiments each week to grow the metric
Review your progress at the end of the week: did it lead to results?
For example, suppose my goal was to grow the subscribers to this newsletter and I had 500 readers. This week, I might post an interesting part on LinkedIn and share the sign up link in my comment. I should then review the results: did this increase my subscriptions?
This is akin to the lean start-up methodology: a simple reminder that building a start-up is about having a theory, running experiments to test that theory and using the feedback you receive to iterate as you go.
Be willing to confront bad news
Sounds simple, right? What I’ve noticed is that it’s easy to get on board with this idea but hard to implement. We like setting goals, but we don’t like holding ourselves accountable to those goals.
Reviewing your progress forces you to confront a hard truth: Is what I’m doing actually working?
I know this all too well when it comes to exercise. My personal trainer, Chris, has access to all of my food logs in a week. Every Sunday, I’m supposed to send Chris a weekly update on my consistency over the past week.
If I haven’t met my targets for the week, Chris will tell me.
Interestingly, if I’m having an inconsistent week, I notice that I just don’t send my weekly update to Chris. It’s much easier to tell myself that I’ll do better next week rather than share the fact that I haven’t reached my target. I’m embarrassed about my lack of consistency.
What I’m learning is that the point of holding yourself accountable is not success. It’s to follow through on doing what you said you’re going to do and measure the results, whatever the outcome.
Whether it’s business, exercise or relationships, what matters is being able to embrace the reality of things, even if it’s not rosy.
Our weekly check
I’m going to apply this lesson to TCLA going forward.
At the moment, each member of the team writes a weekly check in. This involves writing an update on the progress of the previous week and setting goals for the upcoming week.
The problem, I’ve realised, is that my reflection of the previous week does not provide a measurable update. It’s always good news, or a reflection that doesn’t track an identifiable metric, and the goalposts often change.
Going forward, what I’m going to do is publish my goal and the weekly numbers for everyone in the team to see. I’ll hold myself accountable, whether or not I get the outcome I wanted.
Life changes
The irony of this post is now I’m about to talk about all the different directions I’m moving in. At least you can see that I’m far from being immune to these challenges.
Here’s what’s coming up for me:
I’m moving back to London tomorrow - I’m excited!
I am re-joining the Centre for Entrepreneurs Programme (which I previously wrote about here). This time, I’m bringing Erin with me, who helps me with the day-to-day running of TCLA. With these programmes, I often find that I get the most out of them the second-time around and they often lead to unanticipated second-order effects (public speaking practice, new friends, takeaways we apply to the business).
I start a new programme called Ultraspeaking next week. It’s pretty intensive (three sessions a week) and I know I’m going to be nervous, but I also know it’s going to be so useful for accelerating my public speaking progress.