Three Hard Questions

Here’s another edition of Three Hard Questions™️ to help you prioritize and reset. Spend 5–10 minutes thinking about each.

First up, one from the pod:

1. What would you do this week if you knew it would work?

Such a wicked little question.

It’s easy to say something like “write a tweet that would go viral,” and that’s not necessarily a terrible answer, but I doubt it's the most impactful thing that could happen to you. Lots of broad people knowing about you in passing is never as good as the right person knowing about you in depth.

Think about your business drivers. Think about your funnel. Think about your knowledge gap. Think about funding.

What could seriously move the needle for your business?

Who would be a game changer to have in your corner?

Sometimes it's easier to do a visualization exercise. Let's say you hit your 12 month goals next week. What had to happen for that to be the new reality?

Now, logistics. How can you go for it this week?

You only need a few big things to go right each year. Our lives are shaped by a surprisingly few number of big things. Make sure you’re giving them a shot.

2. What could you dramatically overcharge your customers to do for them?

This works best when it isn’t theoretical. It’s obviously easy to say “I bet an entrepreneur would pay me $5k to do customer interviews for them,” but theoretical isn’t helpful. Which entrepreneur? And what’s the other side of the task? What do they get from it? Why is it worth $5k?

This could be a small piece of your product for a specific customer, or a bigger offering - really, anything that they’d overpay for. It’s important to know where the value is. This is often how you find a wedge.

Once you come up with something, email it to the person you think would pay for it and get their feedback.

3. Can you sell the position?

An old favorite.

Mentally drop everything. Every bit of progress on your startup. You're back at square one.

Now, pick up only the very best 10% of what you just dropped.

What'd you pick up?

Was it a specific customer? A specific problem?

What'd you definitely not pick up? What's a distraction?

Recognizing that two things can be true - you did good work AND that good work is not going to help you get to a place where you create enormous, differentiated value for a customer - is the key to being an entrepreneur.

You've heard people talk about saying "no" to opportunities - that includes the stuff you've already done. Sunk costs are a whale.

If you’re doing 10 things, you mentally let go of all ten, then consciously pick the 2 best back and focus on them, you’ll be in a much better place then you were before the exercise.