August 31, 2021
Today I reconnected with a mentor of mine from whopping 5 years ago (this is 1/4 of my life so substantial time has passed for me okay? let me be oldies). He shared a lot – and this guy is a start-up veteran so I lapped it up. But one thing really stuck with me, and it was the importance he placed on telling a cogent story. ya ik, a big word, I’ll explain.
Okay so, first wtf is cogent – as per google it means “clear, logical, and convincing.”
So, when he said cogent story, over and over again, he was saying that founders need to define a clear, logical, and convincing story. That checks out I’ve heard this a lot – makes sense too, you gotta have a good story to get funded, hire people, etc.
But what really struck me was the importance of a cogent story from a personal and psychological standpoint.
Many founders often have this brilliant, lofty, amazing vision that they can get to in 3 years, which is 10000000% essential. Like you need to have that fucking dream you are trying to make a reality. BUT
what they often forget is the importance of being able to boil that down into a CLEAR story of where they will be in 4-6 months. And this isn’t just like “oh I’ll be doing like 30k in MRR by like Jan-ish” its a “We will hit 32k in MRR by Jan 19th at 5pm.”
The difference is a strict and specific goal. Why does it matter? Because if you have a strict and specific goal, then you can walk back, each week, each day, and plan out where tf you are gonna spend your time so that you can hit that goal.
What this does is it allows you to spend time upfront planning and dictating where you will be, and then gives you the mental freedom to wake up each morning for the next 4-6 months and know EXACTLY what you are going to do that day to work towards that goal (and follow the story).
That is huge. If you can save mental cycles on planning each day, you will be able to focus energy on executing, which will give you a great chance of success.
okay that’s all i got. prob one of the more “formal” things I have written so far (LOL n=3 so low bar here), but i found it super important and something that I wanted to remember for later, so here you go.
Outside of that, I’m getting railed on this stupid infrastructure logging issue at work, so back to work at 11:30 woooo
okay bye