Five Solid New Year’s Resolutions for Entrepreneurs (And How To Follow Through On Them)
It’s almost New Year’s day, that time when millions of people attempt to trade sweets for sweat. For entrepreneur’s, New Year’s is a time to focus on a different sort of growth: the personal kind.
If you‘ve read Eric Ries’s “The Lean-Startup”, you understand that entrepreneurship is a process of building, learning, and improving. These five resolutions (four-of-which I’ve tried and tested) will help you to do just that, on a regular basis.
Try any, or all of them, and tweet me how it goes.
- Make One Unreasonable Request per week: No business succeeds without taking a few risks, or sending some uncomfortable email things. Asking for funding, press, or a partnership, is uncomfortable — it’s unnatural, so train yourself by making one unreasonable request per week. Then, when you need to make the big ask, you’ll be comfortable doing so.
Process: 1. Write down some pie-in-the-sky partnerships/deals that would increase your business by 5-10x. 2. Find the email of someone at that potential partner, and write a well-crafted email stating your request. 3. Repeat at least once a week with several other potential partners. 4. Wait. Let go of the rejections (You expected them anyway), and thrive on the yesses. 5. Record results. Celebrate that you had the guts to press send.
2. Read 1 million words of [x] [Or — Read every day]: This was my resolution for 2015. I found that I read a lot of entrepreneurial essays, but I didn’t read fiction, and sci-fi in particular. To dream big, you need to read more fiction. Moreover, reading fiction improves writing skills and brain connectivity and reduces stress.
A million words seems daunting, but broken down, it’s no more than an hour of reading per day(and it’s well worth it)! If you already read a lot of fiction, choose a non-fiction genre, and try to take down a million words of it in a year. You’ll be glad you did.
Process: 1. Decide what you’re going to read, how much of it, and how often, and record those goals and parameters. 2. Start reading. 3. Record Results. 4. Repeat steps 2–3 until you reach your goal.
3. Answer three big questions per week:
This is great if you’re working part-time on a startup idea.
Make a list of your key questions (based on your key assumptions), and try to answer at least three of them per week. By the end of the year, you’ll have answered at least 156 questions, and grown significantly in the process.
Process: Don’t just guess the answer. Instead, use data, interviewing, and research to validate that you’ve found something near the right answer. Track your results in a Google Docs spreadsheet.
4. Launch 12 startups/projects in 12 months:
Suffer from launch anxiety? Not sure how to get a project off the ground? Commit to launching one project a month, and monitor your growth. It worked (quite well) for Pieter Levels.
The time-pressure of launching a project a month led Levels to build several simple, powerful products (i.e NomadList, GoFuckingDoIt) which attracted millions of visitors, and huge attention from the likes of Wired and Lifehacker. He’s now writing a book based on the experience.
Process: 1. Build a project. 2. Launch that project. 3. Evaluate results, and see how you can improve them. 4. Repeat next month (12x). 5 (optional). Blog about it.
5. Write 1 million words [Or — Write every day]:
Writing is suprisingly important in entrepreneurship. From ad-copy, to pitches, to press-releases, entrepreneurs need to write a lot (particularly as a solo founder), so take a little time every day to learn to write well.
From 2011 to 2013 I wrote at least 500 words a day, and it has made my life infinately easier. I no longer fret over filling pages, finding words, or writing proposals (or medium articles). Give it a try, and you’ll thank me.
Process: 1. Write. 2. Track how much you’ve written (or how often). 3. Gather feedback (if you’d like). 4. Repeat. 5. (Optional) Read some great writing books, like Ray Bradbury’s “Zen in the art of writing”.
“You must write every single day of your life… You must lurk in libraries and climb the stacks like ladders to sniff books like perfumes and wear books like hats upon your crazy heads… may you be in love every day for the next 20,000 days. And out of that love, remake a world.” — Ray Bradbury, Sci-fi Author
6. BONUS: Build a daily stress-relief habit:
I say the following from experience: Burnout sucks.
When you’ve been rejected by four people in one day, your site is getting no traffic, and you’re working eleven hours a day, you’re going to feel crappy, and eventually you will shut down.
Luckily, burnout is much easier to prevent than it is to cure. Just build stress-relieving activities into your day, every day.
Keep your mind and body healthy enough to power through the tough times.
Some possible activities: 1-hour daily workout. Pickup basketball. Meditation/yoga. 1-hour of reading time. 1-hour afternoon nap.
Process: Find an activity that relieves you and do it daily. Try a new activity monthly. Switch back to your favorite activity if the new activity doesn’t work out after a week or so.
This story is brought to you by Morning Short, your daily does of fiction.
