Asking why, with Jay
A first in our series of free coaching with our members.
About Jay:
Young, ambitious and hungry. Moved to London from South Africa in order to get involved in the startup scene. He is a go-getter.
Currently working in Customer Happiness at ‘Escape the city’, which he loved.
Goals include financial stability, cycling across the world and owning his own employment.
The talk:
Jay first came wrote to me, asking for help with his startup. It was in idea stage, pre-anything. But he had thought about it quite a lot. An interesting concept which we won’t delve into right now, the idea itself isn’t important.
During the call, we discussed the concept at length, what the MVP may look like (Minimal Viable Product), what kind of people would use it, how to validate it and so on and so on. This essentially led us to the question, why?
Why?:
Most of the time, it seems like we don’t actually ask ourselves why. Why are we trying to tackle 5 projects at once, why are we going to X webinar when I’ve spent the last 2 months doing Y things.
- Patience?
- Income?
- Anxiety?
All of our actions have a hierarchical action above them. A job may bring pleasure, it may be much needed income, it may be for a social life. Going on a date may be for love, for sex, or just for some company. Everything has an End. However as humans it’s hard for us to really step back and look at the bigger picture. Asking the question ‘Why?’. Why am I actually doing this?
These are the cold hard truths about yourself. The things you find hard to even think about. Consider someone who pushes to become a prolific stage speaker. In this instance, let’s say they’re speaking on marketing. They push and push, pushing their personal brand.
Why are they doing it? To garner more attention from potential clients? To teach? Do they have insecurities that they’re trying to prove aren’t there? Something from their childhood?
There is always a bigger why.
Breaking it down:
So we looked at the bigger picture.
‘Jay’, I said in a tentative tone, ‘what would be your one goal, if you could only have one, that you would want to accomplish by January 1st 2018’.
‘To cycle the world, or perhaps even in a van. Living in the road, but having the financial stability to get me there’.
‘Right’, I replied.
So as a reader, consider this. We narrowed his happiness objective, ie, the one thing that should create the most happiness for him, down to just one thing. One thing.
However, that objective has nothing to do with creating a startup.
A startup would take 90 hour weeks, years of commitment, the in-ability to travel so easily and if you’re not SaaS/eCom based, you’re essentially hoping for VC or Angels to step in and fund you. Tying you down to 1 location.
So we worked out that actually, a startup seems to go against all of his interests. It wouldn’t provide income, flexibility, travel and so on. It would do the opposite!
Reverse Engineering the goal:
This is my favourite thing to do, whenever I have a concept, a goal or a plan. Anytime I need to get anywhere, physically or mentally, I reverse engineer it.
The process is a little like this (And we’ll use approx examples for Jay, to give context)
- What is the overarching goal? (To travel independently while working)
- What are the 3 main goals that lead to those goals ($2000 a month, either freelance/remote work or my own hustle, quitting existing commitments)
Okay. This is how you properly do goals. You have 1 goal for the next 8760 hours and then you need laser fucking focus to get there. This is what you’re spending 80% of your time on.
From now till then, he roughly has 300 days, 6500 hoursish. It’s not a lot in absolute terms, but we cant get a lot done in 50 hours, never mind 500, never mind 5000.
Break it down even further, how many freelance jobs will I need? How many hours at what hourly will that be? $40 for 50 hours a month, $50 for 40 hours a month or perhaps just fixed retainers.
Small wins
The final part of reverse engineering is to look for small wins. These are done in the short term, bi-weekly to month goals.
An example would be making $500 via freelance, a month. Even though we’re calling it a small win, realistically it’s a huge win.
Breaking down goals into small wins is vital. This is how you go from ‘A to B’. You don’t just magically get there. You have to go to A.1, A.2, A.3 and so on. So going along the journey.
Everyone, let’s keep Jay accountable, we’ll check back in next week to keep hum accountable. He also won a free membership for life to our upcoming community, so there’s no getting away!
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