Speed and Conviction
“Speed is perpetually undervalued. Asking that person out today means you get to live more of your life with them and less of your life waiting. Starting your business today means you begin learning immediately and have more time to figure out what works. Go fast. The future is never guaranteed and the right time may never come.”
Speed is underrated.
Sometimes our founders think since our process is deliberate - being thoughtful to find the right SOM before moving forward - that moving “slow” is ok. It isn’t. It’s a startup killer. Here’s an example:
We’ve talked about how your startup’s growth will look like a staircase.
You’ll be flat for a long time, searching for a unique insight that’ll propel you to the next phase. Then, when you find it, you jump. You look for a customer with a painful, frequent, urgent, growing, expensive problem. One you can reach and build trust with fast. Then, poof - you’re on the next step.
That jump might take 5 or 10 or 50 interactions with customers. Most interactions will build on each other - the insight might be four intro’s away when you start. And it’s impossible to skip the line - the mess, speaking with someone who introduces you to someone who gives you an idea that you chase down that leads to your first customer - is the toll for a unique insight.
Which means you need to stack stuff as early as possible. If it takes you two weeks to send out an email that gets your first interview, then two weeks to schedule, then two weeks to follow-up, etc. - you’ve elongated the flat part of the graph.
If you move fast and send out 100 emails this afternoon, then follow-up Tuesday and Thursday, you’ve dramatically shortened the path to the insight that’s four intros away.
This is all fairly obvious stuff. So why don’t people do the stuff that’ll create compound interest first?
Three reasons:
Speed comes from conviction, and entrepreneurs can’t have that - if I tell you to go rake the leaves in the back yard, and give you a rake, you can move fast. When you rake, you’ll make progress, and you’ll be done soon. Startup tasks aren’t that clear. You’re operating with incomplete information. You aren’t sure what’ll work or even what you’re looking for, so you delay. X email won’t lead to Y result, so you avoid it.
The work is foreign and uncomfortable - you’ve probably never sent an email to 100 people asking to talk to them about their problems. It’s odd. So, you drag your feet, because we don’t like doing uncomfortable things and it’s much more comfortable to think about a logo.
There’s too much for you to do - sending out 100 emails is a TON of work. You’ll send 5 and it’ll take two hours and you’ll stop.
How to fix them:
Conviction in the process, not the specific actions. The insight you need is probably 3-8 nodes away and there’s no way to guarantee that the path you’re taking - the people you’re emailing first - will get you there. That’s fine. Movement is the key - speak with 20 people in a week and you’ll be 100x closer than if you try to predict the most direct way to getting the insight you need.
Uncomfy hour (or some set time to work on the hard stuff). There are a lot of people in the program doing the same stuff and it’s easier to do it together. Come to uncomfy hour and get cold emails done. Or, timebox 6-7am every morning to knock out the uncomfy stuff when your willpower cup is full. Giving yourself a realistic start and end time for the hard stuff is critical.
Outsource something. This is the most important one. Build a plan - send this email to 100 people - and hire someone for $10/hr on Fiverr to execute on it. Or, to start - to get 50 emails out. Learning how to outsource uncomfortable stuff is the key to moving fast.
Startups need to move fast because startups rely on things compounding. This means you need to stack the stuff that can compound early and execute on it fast. Start the timer so this stuff can build on itself.