James Sinclair tells startup founders to stop grinding without direction and build a real strategy instead. Spend a few weeks mapping your goals, identify what actually creates value, then execute. Strategy beats hustle for scaling.
Chapters
If you're a startup founder and you're running into 2023 and you don't have a strategy, I just want to tell you you're doing a disservice to yourself, to your employees, to your customers, and the opportunity to accelerate your scale. As an early stage founder, I get it. It makes sense. Just run like a bull through a mountain as quick as possible. I understand it. Grit, perseverance, you're doing everything anyway, so why not just run as fast you can and do as much as you can as quick as you can, and try and create mass magic out of thin air. So kudos to that. I understand it. But as you go into 2023, what about thinking, what are my goals? What am I looking to achieve? What am I looking to do? And the reason it's so important is as you start to scale, you have to think, what are the actions I can take that can drive that accretive value to my business? What is the best thing for me to do right now that will help me in tomorrow, three months, six months, nine months down the line, get to my next milestone, whatever my next milestone is. You would be well served to take the next few weeks and really reconcile where you want to be next year at each major milestone and start thinking about what you've got to do to get there. Because that way, you're rolling into 2023, and instead of just getting back at your desk and running, you're walking in with a plan, a strategy that if you execute, gives you potentially a higher chance of accelerated scale, potentially a higher chance of delivering value back to your organization. And that's what you're looking to do. You're looking to create opportunity, to accelerate something, somewhere, somehow. Strategy is such a misunderstood and underutilized value proposition for startup founders, because they're so busy running, they don't take a second to stop, think and actually work out, what do I need to do to get to the next milestone and how should I do it? What it moves to is putting you into the execution game. That's what makes a great startup founder, one that can build a strategy and can execute it. Good luck.
