# articles ## avoiding worthless work [Being swamped is normal and not impressive | Hacker News](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32332109) [Being Swamped is Normal and Not Impressive | Greg Kogan](https://www.gkogan.co/blog/swamped/) [Your small imprecise ask is a big waste of their time | Hacker News](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38231160) [Your Small Imprecise Ask Is a Big Waste of Their Time | Stay SaaSy](https://staysaasy.com/startups/2023/11/10/imprecise-asks.html) ## having grit [Build your career on dirty work | Hacker News](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32800869) [Build Your Career on Dirty Work | Stay SaaSy](https://staysaasy.com/career/2022/09/11/Dirty-Work.html) ## leveraging [Ask HN: What made your business take off that you wish you'd done much earlier? | Hacker News](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30329762) ## persevering [Avoid blundering: 80% of a winning strategy | Hacker News](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39902854) [Avoid blundering: 80% of a winning strategy](https://longform.asmartbear.com/avoid-blundering/) [Persisting as a solo founder | Hacker News](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24251403) [Persisting as a solo founder](https://vishnu.tech/posts/persistence/) # guides ## doing great work [How to Do Great Work | Hacker News](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36550615) [How to Do Great Work](https://paulgraham.com/greatwork.html) [How to Work Hard](http://www.paulgraham.com/hwh.html) ## maintaining rhythm [Pacing: the most important skill in startup engineering leadership | Hacker News](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39680187) [The Most Important Skill in Startup Engineering Leadership · Daniel Mangum](https://danielmangum.com/posts/most-important-skill-startup-engineering-leadership/) ## staying genuine [Eating your own dog food - Wikipedia](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eating_your_own_dog_food) # text ## avoiding worthless work Joshua Schachter: Reduce. Do as little as possible to get what you have to get done. Do less of it - get it done. If you've got two things you want to put together, take away until they go together. Don't add another thing. Because you can understand it better, you can analyze it more cleanly. Doing less is so important. You want to be very aware, all the time, of the passing of time. (Decide how much you want to make, and divide it into your price-per-hour : your "governing number".) If the $340.92 were MY governing number, here's how I would have to use it. First, it'd be on my mind constantly. Is what I'm doing worth $340.92 an hour to do it? Second, it puts a meter on others' consumption of your time-that unnecessary 12-minute phone conversation just cost $68.18. An attorney I know charges: a higher fee to personally handle your case a lower fee to supervise the handling of your case by his staff attorneys yet a lower fee to only consult with your attorney regarding your case. You've got to surround yourself with people who understand and respect the value of your time and behave accordingly. Eliminate the need for doing or delegate those tasks and activities that just cannot and do not match up with the mandated value of your time. If your time isn't worth more than the $5 an hour you could give some neighborhood kid to do menial tasks (mowing lawn), you should be shot. Plus, you're robbing some kid out of the money. Be a business owner instead of being owned by a business. The less I do, the more I make. Anytime you're on your computer ask yourself "Is this activity getting me closer to my launch date?" At this very moment am I making progress towards crossing off a to-do, -or- am I relaxing and re-energizing? If I'm doing neither, evaluate the situation and change it. Define a long-term goal (launch your product), look at the next set of tasks that will get you one step closer to that goal, work, and re-evaluate in a week. The faster you fail and learn from your mistakes, the faster you will improve. Using a tool like SlimTimer, track every minute you spend working on your product, broken down into development, support and marketing. This allows you to monetize your time. ## avoiding worthless work - cutting out the wrong people Time Vampires love meetings, because a bunch of blood-rich victims gather in one place at one time. It's like a buffet. I had an open-door policy at the office for a while. An endless parade of Time Vampires. Suck, suck, suck. By the end of the day, my neck looked like a pincushion. They just lined up, marched in, and happily took turns siphoning me dry. I put out the vampire welcome mat, and they took me up on the invitation. My fault, of course. A VIP list with more than two dozen people on it is not a VIP list at all. ## avoiding worthless work - working on your business and not in it Your business is not your life. Your business is something apart from you, with its own rules and its own purposes. An organism that will live or die according to how well it performs its sole function : find and keep customers. The primary purpose of your business is to serve your life (not vice-versa) Make a perfect prototype for 5000 more just like it. Exactly like it, not just similar. Franchise model: 1. provides consistent value to customers, employees, etc - beyond what they expect 2. operated by people with the lowest possible skill 3. a place of impecable order 4. all work documented in operations manuals 5. provides uniformly predictable service to the customer 6. uses uniform color, dress, facilities code Lowest possible level of skill necessary to fulfill the functions for which each is intended. Of course, in a legal firm you need attorneys, medical, physicians. But you don't need to hire brilliant attorneys or physicians. Create the very best system through which good attorneys and good physicians can be leveraged to produce exquisite results. How can I give my customer the results he wants systematically rather than personally? How can I create a business whose results are systems-dependent rather than people-dependent or expert-dependent? How can I create an expert system rather than hire one? Great business are not built by extraordinary people, but by ordinary people doing extraordinary things. Develop those tools and teach your people how to use them. People's job is to use the tools you've developed and recommend improvements based on their experience with them. NO : Typical owner of a small business prefers highly skilled people because he believes they make his job easier - he can simply leave the work to them. Unfortunately then the business grows to depend on the whims and moods of its people. If they're in the mood, the job gets done. If they're not, it doesn't. In this kind of business, "How do I motivate my people?" comes up : "How do I keep them in the mood?" It is literally impossible to create a consistent result in a business that depends on extraordinary people. When you intentionally build your business around the skills of ordinary people, you will be forced to ask the difficult questions about how to produce a result without the extraordinary ones. You will be forced to find a system that leverages your ordinary people to the point where they can produce extraordinary results over and over again. You will be forced to invent innovative system solutions to the people problems that plague businesses. You will be forced to build a business that works. Documentation says, "This is how we do it here." Without documentation, all routinized work turns into exceptions. Designates the purpose of the work, specifies the steps needed to be taken while doing that work, and summarizes the standards associated with both the process and result. BARBER story : He was constantly and arbitrarily changing my experience for me. He was in control of my experience, not I. Running the business for him, not me. Deprived me of the experience of making a decision to patronize his business for my own reasons. It didn't matter what I wanted. What you do in your model is not as important as doing what you do the same way, each and every time. * How can I get my business to work without me? * How can I get my people to work without my interference? * How can I systematize my business so it could be replicated thousands of times? * How can I own my business, and still be free of it? * How can I spend my time doing the work I love to do rather than the work I have to do? ## carrying out the business plan As you execute the plan, be flexible and fast-moving. Set measurable goals. 3-5 goals measured on a weekly basis are plenty. Communicate: Employees should wake up in the morning thinking about how they're going to help achieve these goals. Norman Augustine's Law Number III: There are no lazy veteran lion hunters. Norman Augustine's Law Number VI: A hungry dog hunts best. A hungrier dog hunts even better. ## delegating Fire yourself! You'll make more money and have more fun. Good enough is good enough. Many, many things can be delegated to people who will not do them the way you would, won't do them as perfectly as you would, but will wind up with the same result. Every one of these things should be delegated. In fact, you MUST delegate. You cannot move ahead without jettisoning some responsibilities and tasks in order to make room for new, more valuable tasks and responsibilities. If you have anybody around you with intelligence and talent, you must keep giving them new, more important responsibilities and getting them to delegate. You MUST master this difficult skill. To delegate effectively, here's the seven-step process: 1. Define what is to be done. 2. Be certain the delegatee understands what is to be done. 3. Explain why it is to be done as you are prescribing it to be done. 4. Teach how it is to be done without micro-micro-managing. 5. Be sure the delegatee understands the how-to process. 6. Set the deadline for completion or progress report. 7. Be sure you have agreement to the date or time and method. Many entrepreneurs are so busy doing the $10.00-an-hour jobs, they never get to do the $100.00-an-hour job: marketing to bring in new customers, and to keep customers coming back. - THIS IS THE ASPECT OF OPPORTUNITY COST: DO WHAT YOU ARE [SPECIALIZED] AT There are a lot of people you can hire to make the sauce, but there's hardly anybody you can hire to effectively market and promote the restaurant. My "Dan as Center of Universe Strategy": me in the middle and satellite businesses owned and managed by others all based on me, my writings, my other content, all paying me. Right now, there are four such satellites. The action that turns your time into the most money and wealth possible: turn your attention to marketing. Get free of as many other aspects of your business as you can, get passionately interested in and good at marketing, and invest your time there. Why? Because it is infinitely easier to find or train someone to take care of a business' operations than it is to get someone to do its marketing. Marketing is the highestpaid profession and most valuable part of a business. The person who can create systems for acquiring customers, clients, or patients effectively and profitably is the "money person." One of the most important things to me is a continuous stream of new requests for my services. As long as this demand for "me" exceeds the available supply of "me," I can demand and get premium fees, insist on first-class travel, choose clients I like and blow off those I don't, choose projects that interest me and reject those I don't, confidently turn away business knowing the temporary vacuum will fill, and generally do as I darned well please. But if I let the demand diminish so that supply exceeds demand, I have to start compromising all over the place. So this is very important to me. What can I do every day to be certain this demand-supply ratio stays weighted in my favor? I do not let a day go by that I do not send out a letter or a package, make or return a phone call, get an article published, do something to keep my books on bookstore shelves, secure a highprofile speaking engagement, or do something else to create and stimulate "deal flow." Two overriding supervisory rules that you'll want to remember. 1. Expect the best. Expectations have enormous impact on results. And conveyed expectations have great impact on most people. Most folks are smarter and more capable than we give them credit for. Some never get challenged. 2. Know that you only have the right to expect what you inspect. For each person you delegate to, have a list of everything, big or small, that you turn over to that person. As each one responds, you can mark off the items. Every so often, check the list for the lagging items. Procrastination is your body telling you that you need to back off a bit and think more about what you are doing. It could also mean you are doing work that is not your forte and that you are better off delegating. I find that many entrepreneurs are trying to do everything when it would be cheaper and more time-efficient to delegate, Don't get involved with functions that are not in your circle of competency or strength. It doesn't do you any good, and it certainly won't make your ride any easier. If you'd rather be anywhere than doing your great work on a Saturday morning, then you're probably doing the wrong thing or looking at it the wrong way. Get enough sales going so you can quit taking out the trash and hire someone else to do it. Get more sales going, then quit doing the accounting. Hire a specialist to do it. Get more sales going and quit doing customer service, too. You want to go from everything to nothing - except leading. The big secret of how to get it all done? Don't. Just do the vital functions (amazingly well) and build a great team of capable players who are excellent at the rest. So I bought a stopwatch and wore it around my neck all day. I turned it on every time I did one of those vital three functions and turned it off the split second I stopped. Can you guess what that (evil) stopwatch said? Less than 20 minutes out of a 16-hour day. Success has less to do with what we can get ourselves to do and more to do with keeping ourselves from doing what we shouldn't. An inbox actually is the modern day mailroom! (So don't work in the mailroom.) Delegation requires humility. A recognition that you aren't the only one who can do something well, quickly, and competently. Stop being a narcissist and let go. He's figured out his one vital function. What's yours? What's your one thing that contributes the most to your enterprise? What is your greatest contribution to making your rocket ship fly? "The client will pay whatever it takes," we said. "How much would it cost for Sir Richard to attend?" Here's the response from his office: "No amount of money would matter. Right now, Richard has three strategic priorities he is focused on, and he will only allow us to allocate his calendar to something that significantly contributes to the accomplishment of one of those three priorities, and speaking for a fee is not one of them." If you have more than three priorities, you don't have any. Warren Buffett's key to success: "For every hundred great opportunities that are brought to me, I say 'no' ninety-nine times." Make sure that the next time you consider saying "yes" (when you really should be saying "no"), it's a "Hell Yeah!" or don't even consider it. "Why do you do what you do?" I was quick to respond, "Impact. To positively impact people's lives and futures." A: "Then measure that." Before I start any task I ask myself: "Could one of my contractors possibly do this?" One of the biggest adjustments is accepting that time is your most precious commodity. If you value your time at $100/hour, outsourcing work to a $6/hour virtual assistant is a no-brainer. Putting a value on your time is a foundational step in becoming an entrepreneur, and it's one many entrepreneurs never take. Skipping this step can result in late nights performing menial tasks you should be outsourcing. [Shoshanna Solomon](https://www.timesofisrael.com/as-startups-grow-founders-need-to-learn-to-let-go/) (2018) As startups grow, founders need to learn to let go > As your company grows you have to get used to the fact that you cannot be involved in all the aspects of the company. To delegate is hard > Delegating, he said, is another tough thing to do. “The key is to hire people who are more intelligent than you, to find people who are super, super smart, ” ## delegating - outsourcing and automating Nearly anything I try to automate is easier to outsource first, and then automate down the line once the volume warrants it. Out of 30 tasks you might be able to outsource 6 or 8 of them tomorrow if you spend 2-3 hours today writing up the processes. Compare that with automation, which can take a week or more to get each task off your plate since it takes a lot of code to automate a task. As a startup, one of your advantages is that you move very quickly. You can roll out new features much quicker than your competition. And being able to manually process some parts of a task can often reduce your development time by 50-80% which allows you to get the feature out the door and in front of customers. If customers decide to use it, then you can automate it. If not, you can throw what little time you spent on it away. You develop the minimum required functionality to make the bare bones feature work; nothing more. You scaffold the rest with a human being; your VA. ## finding models If you couldn't find a heroic, successful role model, then just look at what everybody else is doing and don't do that. My mother said to me, "If you become a soldier you'll be a general; if you become a monk, you'll end up as the Pope." Instead, I became a painter and wound up as Picasso. -PABLO PICASSO What's the number one restaurant in the world? Answer: McDonald's. What's the number one wine in the world? Answer: Franzia. It's not a whoever-has-the-best-product-wins world. ## focus on customer relationships OLD tPA: The Customers - Be grateful - appreciate the loyal customers, advocates of your brand are priceless in value - Look after those who look after you - give under-the-radar referral bonuses and perks to loyal people - Get paid before you hand over a project to a client - you lose bargaining power when you turn the project over to the client - It's not a sale until it's paid for - do not become excited about prospective clients until they've paid for the service - You'll make more money being "wrong" than proving you are right - it's more cost-effective to lose a dissatisfied customer than spend resources trying to retain them, they're not the ideal client and that's okay - Agree on scope in advance - have a clear contract before work begins, charge for a project going beyond the plan Sabeer Bhatia: The one lesson I've learned is you've got to own the customer. It's OK if you don't monetize them up front, but having that customer base and being able to upsell them services or advertise - you can always make money off of them. Make sure you write a business plan because it will crystallize your thoughts to communicate your ideas with somebody else. Once written, have someone critique it and ask you questions. Don't try to change user behavior dramatically. Make it a small change, yet an important one. ## getting it done When your product is "good enough", get it out, because cash flows when you start shipping. We have a tendency to say, oh, that book, that CD, that program, that seminar didn't work. Noooooo, it wasn't the material that didn't work. You didn't do the work. Each quarter I figure out what skill is most needed to advance my BIG 3 goals, and I then attack it. I buy the top five books on the topic, the top three audio or video programs on the topic, and sign up for (at least) one seminar focused on that skill. Then I spend the quarter studying, practicing, and tracking my improvement on that vital skill. ## keeping your word A person who cannot keep appointments on time, cannot keep scheduled commitments, or cannot stick to a schedule cannot be trusted in other ways either. People who can't be punctual can't be trusted. Performance improves with measurement and accountability to someone else. Highly successful people do what they need to do, whether they like it or not, in order to get the results they want. Follow through on an issue until it is done. A CEO whose philosophy was to pay people, including his vendors and suppliers, a few days in advance of the contract commitment. I was always blown away when I received a check on the twenty-seventh of the month from him for next month's payment. When I asked him about it, he said the obvious, "It's the same money, but the surprise and good will it buys is immeasurable-why wouldn't you?" Promise to ship, but don't promise the result. ## measuring productivity Metrics. For instance: New database opt-ins. The three goals that if you achieved them, would make this year, undeniably, the best year of your life. Tracking your habits prevents drift. You need to know if you're on track. It's not what you learn or what you know; it's what you do with what you know and learn. Reading 32 books means you're reading a lot, but does it mean you're applying it? If you start any business counting the hours you work or limiting the tasks you're willing to shoulder, your business will fail. ## money mgmt OLD tPA: Managing Finances - Patience and flexibility help you survive the lean times - scale slowly to avoid debt - Save up - you can operate at a loss for several years but can only run out of cash once, have a rainy day fund with 2-3 months' worth of operating costs in it and a line of credit even if you don't plan to use it - Keep re-investing - put as much back into the business as you physically can Joe Kraus: Hire slowly and more carefully. Be cheap, cheap, cheap. Get the legs of the business underneath it before you run terribly fast. Take the time to understand the dynamics of the business so we can scale it. ## old tPA productivity ### Focus every dollar into making the most profitable sales Avoid impulse spending near the beginning - Carefully assess every dollar you spend - Sponsoring conferences to appear large isn't cost-effective - Cut out any expenses that don't create results as much as you expected You're selling yourself, not the product, and your personality will close deals - You must tailor each product sales pitch to each potential client - Loyal customers have more value than money, so advertise and celebrate them with referral bonuses and perks A startup budget doesn't have any room for a hit-or-miss marketing strategy - Only sell to a familiar market since an unfamiliar one will cause massive losses - Use social media networks intentionally since a wrongly used channel might be worse than not using it - Trying to keep dissatisfied customers is less cost-effective than losing them and working to gain new ones Only hand the customer the product after the customer paid you - The person holding the product always has bargaining power - The customer hasn't bought the product until they pay for it, so only use lines of credit as a backup plan if they don't pay #### Micromanage vendor relationships Take pictures of business cards people hand you just in case you lose them Trust your gut instincts with them Rate your vendors and suppliers correctly - Make performance indicators - Classify every supplier and vendor - Determine who has more power and influence - Maintain good relationships with everyone - Sever weak links ### The company won't make much money for a while Slim or no profits will test your patience and resilience for weeks, months or even years [Persevere](http://philosaccounting.com/a/success-4/) through unsuccessful times by understanding how low points are opportunities for growth and learning Re-analyze periodically - Conduct new market research or segment the market - Reconsider the product from a different angle - Revisit the business plan Poor expense management is one of the most common ways to lower profits - Learn [ways to shave down costs](http://philosaccounting.com/a/money-202-tricks-to-shave-down-costs/) - Speed up everyone's workflow with better software, better equipment or new technology - Improve your relationships with employees to boost morale by giving incentives Sometimes you need a vacation to clear your mind ## reinvesting in yourself Every dollar you invest in your personal development adds thirty to your bottom line. I made $150,000 that year, and I took $15,000 and reinvested it in my personal development. The following year, I grew tremendously, and I've followed his advice ever since. The greatest athletes in the world hire the most expensive coaches, consultants, and advisors. The greatest companies do the same. ## self-discipline OLD tPA: Your Work - Be passionate about your work - wake up every day ready and eager to do business - You can't do everything on your own - you need a team to carry the weight that will come as time progresses - Believe in yourself - you're selling yourself, not the product, and people want genuine boldness and confidence - Do one thing really well - specialize in order to provide better service to who is being specialized to - Don't expect to be an overwhelming success right away - even at the low points you will still be growing and learning "My life is one long obstacle course, with me being the chief obstacle." -JACK PAAR It is 6:00 A.M. And here I am, at the keyboard, in my home office, writing. That's what I do almost every day, for at least the first early hour of the morning, no matter what. Self-discipline is the magic power that makes you virtually unstoppable. Self-discipline is MAGNETIC. And self-discipline aimed and applied at a particular thing, as I do to writing, as Pincay does to fitness, is quite literally a magic power. When you focus your self-discipline on a single purpose, like sunlight through a magnifying glass on a single object, look out! The whole world will scramble to get out of your way, hold the doors open for you, and salute as you walk by. It takes tremendous self-discipline to productively allocate and invest time and to stick to your intentions. Because the entrepreneur is his own boss and can do as he pleases with his time, it is very important to be self-disciplined. The entrepreneur with a loose, buddy-buddy, easily forgiving boss will never accomplish much. It is the entrepreneur with the tough taskmaster as a boss who excels. The only constraint of a company's growth and potential is the owner's ambition. I am the constraint. The market, the opportunity, everything is there. It's up to me to set the pace, clear the obstacles, get the resources, and create the conversations to grow the company faster. As CEO, the most important thing I manage is myself. Do that right, and everything else falls into place. Once you dig (find someone or something you like), keep drilling - go deeper. ## staying active Nothing in business is quite like the early, frenetic days of an ambitious start-up project. There's always an amazing buzz about this kind of thing. It's high-octane and high-risk and it builds a tremendous spirit and camaraderie which takes everyone through some very trying times. I've seldom seen people work harder than in the initial stages of a new venture. Once a business matures and is established, it can become more challenging to retain that excitement. What we do at Virgin is not let businesses get too mature. If you can keep the businesses relatively small, people will know each other within the organisation and feel like part of a team. Learn to work fast(er). It makes you sharper. Do Not Look a Gift Horse in the Mouth. Get On, Hang On, and Enjoy the Gallop. There are those times, those days, those "spurts," when you can do no wrong. Say "Thank You." Sleep less, gulp more vitamins, and go with the flow. Be alert for this happening, then fan the fire. For a brief time, you will want to loosen up your cautions about taking on more than you can handle and embrace it all. When The Phenomenon occurs, it's doubly important to be on guard against anybody or anything that may snuff out the fire. Populating my work environment with "psychological triggers"-objects that remind me to think a certain way. I work at mentally attracting wealth, for example, so my primary work environment is full of things that represent wealth; at last count, 27 such pictures, objects, and artifacts were within view. Because I am very concerned with time, I have eight clocks around me. I have a wooden hangman's noose to remind me of deadlines. Dentist: "I've made a list of 300 things to change in the practice." Every week, he did ten of them. After 30 weeks, he had done everything on that list, big and small. And, without a penny increase in advertising, without a dollar's difference in marketing, in the same office, with (almost) the same staff, his practice had more than quadrupled in volume. ## staying genuine OLD tPA: The Product - You may think your product is perfect, but your clients won't - your opinion may not be the best one, listen to user feedback - Undercharging is not sustainable - focus on quality, expertise and niche focus instead of price, since any idiot can undersell - When you think you've tested your product enough, test it some more - never release a product until it has been tested exhaustively by people who don't work for you - If your company sells a variety of products, make sure you know how to use/operate every single one of them - it helps you look at things with fresh eyes Steve Wozniak: Have the higest of ethics. Be open and truthful about things, not hiding. Don't mislead people. Always seek excellence : make your product better than the average person would. Evan Williams: What kills great things is compromise - letting people talk you out of what your gut is telling you. Establish a culture of execution in the early days. The CEO should set an example of meeting goals, responding to customers, and heeding and measuring employees. This obsession should include the CEO's answering emails and responding to phone calls. Better clients demand better work. Better clients want you to push the envelope, win awards, and challenge their expectations. Better clients pay on time. Better clients talk about you and your work. But finding better clients isn't easy, partly because we don't trust ourselves enough to imagine that we deserve them. ## time management Ideally, you should schedule your day by the half-hour, from beginning to end. You must systematically, aggressively divest yourself of those activities you do not do well, do not do happily, or find routine, so as to systematically invest your time (and talent, knowledge, know-how, and other resources) in those things you do extraordinarily well, enjoy doing, and find intellectually stimulating. Contrary to all of government's ill-fated, Robin Hoodesque efforts, 5% of the people get 95% of the money. We have a sense of urgency the 95%ers don't. Here's how to get focused, if you're having trouble in that department: identify and write down the three most important, most significant, most productive, most valuable things you can do to foster success in your particular enterprise. Just three. Write them down. From there, translate them into three actions you can take each and everyday. Write them down. Nothing and no one can steal the time required to make certain that happens. Every single day. No exceptions. No excuses. As a direct result, "demand" for me has steadily grown, even as the "supply" I am willing to offer has diminished, which has allowed me to very substantially raise my fees, keep raising them every year, fire troublesome clients without remorse, and do business entirely on my terms, to suit me. This one single, simple discipline has been worth millions. The best use you can make of a Blackberry is to buy them for all of your competitors. They'll never have time for another creative thought.