Recently, I started advising a few early stage founders and investing in a couple.

I realized today after one of those sessions that there are 2 types of problems in early stage startups: business problems, and founder problems.

I wrote down a few notes to discuss problems I saw with the founder’s execution: marketing, product, and hiring.

I was unhappy with their execution, and I felt that something was off.

For some reason, I got the inspiration to ask: are you okay? Is everything fine on your end? Before pestering them with specific feedback on their execution. That unpacked a lot, and we didn’t need to discuss the business problems.

My initial impression of this founder was very positive. High agency, gets things done, hungry, etc. However, my impression was changing as a response to poor execution in the past couple of months.

I told him “there are 2 types of problems: business problems, and founder problems”. Business problems are easy – you can resolve all of them. I can help you with those.

However, I can’t help much with founder problems.

What are founder problems?

“The Plan is No Plan”. This statement was repeated about 100 times in 2 weeks of camping away from civilization with a group of friends.

“What’s the plan tomorrow?” => “the plan is no plan”
“Are we going to this mountain?” => “the plan is no plan”

We were living each day at a time. There were ideas from the days prior, but we chose what we wanted to do on the day itself. The default was dropping any idea or commitment from the days before, and starting with a blank slate: what feels right today?

In the movie “Ford vs. Ferrari”, the driver of the Ford GT was advised not to push the RPM too hard, because the physical body of the car couldn’t handle how powerful the engine was.

Sometimes, it feels like that’s what I’m consistently doing; pushing mental RPM to the max, and in the process putting a lot of strain on my physical body.

This analogy changed the game for me. This is a brain dump of the analogy broken down into a few areas.

• Business is a sport
  • Most people think of sports as “physical”. Business is a mental sport
  • Business is a team sport, you can’t play on your own
  • Basketball is about getting the ball in the enemy’s hoop. Business is about solving customer problems
    • The bigger the problems you solve, the more customers are willing to pay you for it
    • The more people that have such problem, the more customers you would have
• Score
  • The score in basketball is a count of how many times you got the ball through the hoop. The score in business is about how many times you solved a customer problem
  • The score is revenues and profits, exchanging your “solution” with the customer’s money
  • People pay you their hard earned money if you’re truly solving a big problem for them
  • The more uniquely you’re solving it, the higher people would be willing to pay your for it (high margin). The less differentiated your solution is from others, the less people would be willing to pay you for it (low margin commodity)
• Athletes
  • The best sports teams comprise of the best athletes and supporting teams (coaches, trainers, etc.)
  • Employees are athletes of business. Depending on the league, your business might have superstars, or laid back amateurs
  • The best athletes want to win badly, and do whatever it takes to do so
  • The best players play because they’re obsessed & in love with the game. Money is just the score; it’s not why they play. But it indicates winning, and they care about winning
• Positions
  • In football, there’s attack, defense, midfield, etc. In business, there’s marketing, operations, finance, etc
  • Each position in business comprises of a team. If you want your finance position to be world-class, you must have a world class leader and players under that leader
• Performance
  • You can measure the performance of a defender in basketball by how many shots they blocked. 9/10 is a good defender, probably
  • In the sport of business, there must be some measurement of performance as well for the athletes (aka KPIs; key performance indicators or OKRs; objectives & key results)
• Leagues
  • Every sport has its leagues. You can play in a semi-professional 5th league, or you can play in the Premier League or the NBA
  • Business also has leagues. League 1 has the biggest companies in the world (Apple, Nike, Porsche, etc)
  • At the bottom of the list, you have small businesses that are operator owned offering commoditized products & services
• Winners & Losers
  • The 2nd winner is the 1st loser; applies in sports and business equally
  • The sport of business has infinite divisions/sub-sports (industries/markets). If you’re selling sports shoes, you’re in competition with Nike. They are the winner, you are the underdog (for now, at least)
• Competition
  • How badly you want to win dictate how much you win
  • Business is the most competitive sport in the world. While you sleep, someone out there is trying to outcompete you
  • In physical sports, there are seasons, game times, and schedules. In business, it’s 24/7, all year long. It never stops
• Rules
  • In physical sports, there are associations that define the rules of the game. In business, there are no rules
  • The closest thing to rules are regulations that governments set up, but those often define the rules to play fairly, not the rules to win
• Olympics
  • Startups are the Olympics of business
  • Founders of startups embody elite athleticism that sets them apart. They find out what the ‘world record’ is, and take on whatever Goliath that came before them
• Team Spirit
  • Is everyone showing up on time for practice? Is everyone putting their 110%? If not, morale takes a hit, and team culture/spirit is hindered
  • Company culture is the equivalent for team spirit in sports
• Coach
  • In physical sports, the coach and supporting team are instrumental to winning. They have the birds eye view, and work with the players to improve their game
• Team of Teams
  • In basketball, you have 5 players. In football, you have 11 players. In business, you can have a million players (divided into smaller teams)
  • Unlike physical sports, business can have nested teams. The “defender” actually has a team of 5 defenders. Each of them has a team of 5 more defenders. Sometimes, each of those also has 5 more defenders. Each of them specialize in a specific type of defense

I’ll keep updating this every now and then.

If you’re so smart, how come you haven’t figured out how to be happy?

I heard something like this a while ago and it stuck with me.

I started using it as a mental model to play tricks on my mind.

If you’re so smart, how come you aren’t fit yet?

If you’re so smart, how come you haven’t achieved financial freedom? The list goes on…

Our ego tells us that we’re the smartest person in the world.

It creates all these narratives about how you’re the best and how everyone around you just doesn’t get it. It fools us into comfort.

But if you face reality and ask such questions, you realize that there’s a lot for you to do to prove that you’re so smart.

And you get to use this perception or belief that’s generated by your ego (that you’re so smart) to fuel work to making such goals happen.

If you are so smart, then achieve happiness, become fit, and gain financial freedom in the next couple of years.

Otherwise, are you so smart?

You only know your real limit when your back is against the wall.

“If your life depended on it, would you do it?”

Andy Grove says that people don’t do things for 1 of 2 reasons: either a lack of motivation, or a lack of skills. The question above tells you which one it is.

However, I believe that if your life depended on it, and you had enough time, then you would attain such skills in an unfathomable pace.

Most people don’t achieve much in life. I attribute this mostly to the fact that they don’t want the ‘thing’ badly enough.

Their lives don’t depend on it, therefore it always takes the backseat.

“Burn the boats” is one of the most powerful examples to how you can use such analogy to your advantage. If your psyche thought your life depended on something, it will make you super human.

Once upon a time, 2 men went to the jungle to chop some trees.

They competed on who can chop more trees by the end of the day.

They both started chopping away, somewhat close to each other.

As they were chopping, the first guy heard the chopping noise stopping.

He was like “ha! It’s my opportunity to keep going now!”. He kept chopping away.

I noticed something about myself yesterday.

I often find myself unhappy with myself.

That usually is a function of wanting to be somewhere else than where I am.

It could be as simple as: I want XYZ tasks to be done, but they are not done yet.

There’s a delta between where I want to be and where I am.

The bigger the delta, the more unhappy I am.

This might not sound like a major thing for some, but in my head, if I don’t get XYZ done, we die as a business.

Realistically speaking, that will always be the case, especially for someone with goals. It’s a blessing and a curse.

Anyway, I realized that when I can be conscious of that ‘unhappiness’, I can also be intentional about changing it.

How do I change it?

I turn on my beast mode.

Imagine if there were 2 identical twins.

Imagine placing each one in a separate room.

In each room, you play a different audio track every night and morning.

For twin 1, the audio says: you can do it. You are powerful. If not you, then who? You have greatness within you. If you put your mind to anything, you will conquer it.

For twin 2, the audio says: you are weak. You are a loser. You will always be a loser. You won’t make it. The risk is too high, you will likely fail and embarrass yourself.

Imagine if you do this for 30 days. Will they still seem like identical twins to you? Or will they be entirely different individuals?

What if you did it for a year?

You get the point.

If this resonates, then reflect on which voice you allow to play in your own head. And yes, you are capable of consciously changing that.

Both voices compound, meaning that you can either become 1% more positive every day, or 1% more negative every day. The power of compounding means that within a year, you can be 38 times more positive or 38 times more negative.

I think most of our mental health issues these days stem from negativity which is portrayed in the form of fear.

Remember that you can break the cycle, and regain control of the voice in your head. Our subconscious loves repetition. Affirmations every night and morning are the best brain hack. They cost nothing but your commitment. They take nothing but 5 minutes a day.

The Twins are within you. The choice is yours. Which audio are you going to play?

The biggest enemy is unrealized potential.

You can never realize 100% of your potential, but you sure can work towards it and obsess over it.

The only people who come close to realizing their full potential are those who obsess over it.

To obsess over your potential, you must never be satisfied/overly happy/proud/indulgent in where you already reached to. Instead, you must remind yourself of how far you have left to go.

The only people who will do this are those who want it badly enough.
Such people would be truly bothered by wasted potential.

This applies to an individual, a project, or a business.

You can be everything you want to be.
The only question is how badly do you want it?