Five things you want to master before anything else

Lesson 13 of the FemFuel Fempreneurial Journey

Throughout my career, I've been privileged to encounter awe-inspiring stories of women who not only went big but also embodied a distinct entrepreneurial spirit.

These stories are not just tales of success; they are blueprints of resilience, adaptability, and unwavering determination. This is the 13th lesson, tools that help

Launching a startup from scratch often means facing a scarcity of essential resources—human, social, and financial. As the founder, you bear the responsibility of gathering these resources, often while juggling a full-time job. In this scenario, time becomes a precious commodity in short supply. To navigate this challenge, you must refine your startup idea and cultivate a crystal-clear vision. Only then can you effectively attract and persuade the right individuals to join your cause and contribute to your venture.

How do you solve that chicken-n-egg riddle?

As your workload inevitably swells beyond the confines of the 24-hour day, the knee-jerk reaction may be to cram more tasks into each fleeting hour. Yet, this approach often leads to exhaustion and burnout, without significantly advancing your objectives. Moreover, the to-do list seems to stretch endlessly, mirroring the perpetual demands of entrepreneurship.

In this tumultuous landscape, efficiency becomes your saving grace. You must surpass the levels of efficiency demanded by your former life, where the confines of a full-time job provided a semblance of structure. But what does efficiency truly entail in this context?

1. Speed

You become faster by aiming to get more work done in less time. You start thinking and acting quicker. A nice side effect of this is that you gradually destroy perfectionism, as you don’t have the time to perfect things when your priority is to validate your assumptions and make progress. You get familiar with the Lean Startup Strategy , and learn to move forward with minimum effort, so you can actually figure out how to build a sustainable business in the first place. That’s where your steep learning curve kicks into gear.

2. Prioritization

You start prioritizing and developing the ability to discern the few vital activities from the unimportant many. Then, you allocate more time to these important tasks, and less time to the less important tasks. The more you do that, the more you train your brain to do it, so it eventually starts happening automatically. When a non-essential item appears, you try to get it out of your way ASAP, so you can make time for the crucial stuff. That’s why founders usually respond within an hour – they don’t let emails pile up and create clutter. This is called inbox zero and it’s a prerequisite for efficient management.

3. Task Management

The process of constant assessment and categorization of your endless tasks, ideas, requests etc. becomes the way you operate. If it doesn’t, you’re surely not making real progress. A best practice here is the GTD system outlined in the book Getting Things Done : The Art of Stress-Free Productivity, by David Allen

4. Essentialism

However, the further you advance, the more complex things get. Each new stage of development brings its own areas of work and responsibility. Latest when you have team members on board, ‘firefighting’ might fill up your days and make you lose track of your long-term goals. That’s where a concept called Essentialism comes to save you. It teaches you that:

Determining what is important requires discipline in scanning and filtering conflicting and competing information, options, opinions, and facts that clamor for your attention. It doesn’t mean hearing the loudest, but noticing what’s not being talked about.        

Essentialism is about deliberately creating space to work on your top priority. It teaches you to keep the main thing the main thing . Which means blocking time and removing all distractions. It’s a system that helps you shift from an employee to an employer mindset and develop as a leader.

5. Leadership

One of the first things you understand on the founder's journey is that leadership is self-leadership first. You’ve got to be able to lead and manage yourself first before you can lead and manage other people and their processes effectively.

Your business can only grow to the extent that you do, and your team cannot be more efficient than you are. You set the tone for everything. The way you think and operate is directly reflected in your business. Therefore, the first thing to manage and optimize is yourself. Love this one: 7 habits of effective people

Finally, all five things can take a long time to adopt, as they typically suggest deep personal transformation. Patience and a sharp focus on progress (meaning an appreciation of every baby step you take;) help enormously along the way.

Who is using already which tools and which would you add??

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This is a series of posts, each uncovering a lesson I learned from entrepreneurship

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