Solo-founder here who loves to build and has learnt over a period of time that distribution and understanding the needs is probably 80% of a company. One of the hardest thing for me is not to spend my time just building stuff which are great in my head. Some ground rules I have made are:
" Don’t build until you understand the need", " Be ready to be uncomfortable during times when you are just thinking and chatting with customers", " Have a clear separation in the day when you move from marketing to build mode-helps with context switch". Any other tips, anyone might have?
Block time instead of context switching, even entire days if possible.
e.g. Monday and Wednesday are 100% dedicated to learning about distribution dynamics and planning for the week.
It’s also important to make sure to check yourself halfway through to ensure that you’re moving in the right direction which is why I used to have “Snap Back Wednesdays”. Now I don’t need to “build”, but I still do that every morning.
superb! The idea of Snap back Wednesdays sounds awesome. If you don’t mind can I ask how you exactly executed it? As in reminders, calendars etc?
Yes, started with calendar time blocking/alarms, and then also an accountability partner.
What are you building?