Planning is a waste of time, do this instead

I'm building a SaaS in public, posting progress every day.

I'm getting some amazing feedback from this experience and an overwhelming amount of support. Thank you so much to all the people leaving a comment and messaging me, you're truly amazing!

I want to add a bit of structure to make it easier for different people to consume what I post. Some of you want a TL;DR; some of you love the long-form story. There is space for both!

Recap:

- I started a company almost 2 years ago. It failed. I made tons of mistakes and I learned A LOT. Now I'm live-building my next thing sharing everything about the process.

- I had a problem that caused me to lose tons of time and money: I didn't know how to create a high-converting landing page.

- I think this is a problem that can be solved with a product. I'm doing customer interviews now to confirm if this hypothesis is correct.

Today's TL;DR;

- Planning is useless in the early stages.

- Instead of planning, figure out the ONE thing that will move the needle every single day.

- In my new SaaS I have an initial goal of £100 in profit.

- To make an impact on that number, the ONE big thing I'm doing is to talk with as many people as possible to validate if they are willing to pay for my product.

- CELEBRATIONS: I've got 5 subscribers to the newsletter, and none of them is one of my alt accounts. This is HUGE, to the 5 of you, thank you! You are my heroes!

Why planning is the worse thing for you (in the beginning)

I am an engineer. I like having a plan of what I'm going to do.

I like to know what are the results and the steps that will allow me to get there.

I've used that approach in business too, here's the plan I had for my first startup:

- Create a mobile app

- Create a viral loop in the app to make people bringing in more people

- Grow the app userbase

- Figure out a way to monetize

This is a terrible plan. There are 2 obvious problems with that plan:

1. generating revenue was at the bottom of the plan. That's bad. Without income, the company is destined to fail (yes even with VC capital)

2. The plan gave me a false sense of confidence that I was doing the right things if I was sticking to it

I estimated that would take no more than a couple of months. I had a family situation and my personal life kinda exploded so took about 5 months to execute.

But I had a plan. So even if things would take a little longer to complete it was fine as long as I was making progress according to the plan.

That was by far the biggest reason why my company failed.

I had a false sense of security that I was doing ok. Worse is that as a solopreneur, I had nobody to take me out of the hole I dug for myself.

I understand why YC is so bullish on having a co-founder now.

Is there a better way to operate?

I stumbled on a better way to operate.

Warning: this is a very opinionated piece. Feelings might get hurt. This is what worked for ME.

A better way for me involves 2 steps:

1. Set a goal on the most high-impact metric.

2. Every day figure out how to make meaningful improvements to that metric.

Let me break it down:

Picking a good metric

Pick a good metric sounds very cliche, but is insane how we overcomplicate this step.

We worry about compound metrics, leading and lagging metrics, and abstracted convoluted ways that can tell us how well we're doing.

The one metric that counts is profit.

I should've focused on how much money I was getting from my users after removing costs.

Profit is the only metric that counts.

If you're not working to become profitable (HOT TAKE alert) you're doing the wrong thing.

I'm very bullish on this one. I have wasted almost 2 years of my life. Be better than me and focus on profits.

Profit is a good metric that will ensure that you're going from 0 to pay yourself a salary so you don't have to shut down the whole thing and go find a job. It also ensures that as you scale, you don't have to go through cost-cutting measures like firing half of your team.

There is a good argument for user revenue as a metric, most companies boast their MRR as a key metric. If it makes sense for you great, use it. But be aware that costs in a SaaS can be wild. Add a bit of AI and a Meta campaign and your cost will go through the roof. You might get 10kMRR but if your cost is 50k, what's the point?

Making meaningful progress every day

I've heard this while listening to My First Million (thanks Shaan for this, you're awesome).

Every day figure out the ONE thing that will make today a success.

From My First Million: "What's the one thing, that if I just did that one thing, today would be a win?

What is one thing that if I did, I wouldn't have to do anything else for this day to still be a win? "

The one thing won't be a task or one individual item but is an outcome. That can translate into many items for your to-do list. We'll talk about the to-do list in another post, I have strong feelings about them.

With all the theory and stories out of the way, let's set some goals

I don't have to start with some insane number. Let's make enough money so that my new company can buy me dinner.

Let's be aggressive and let's go for £100 in profit and get a really good dinner. Technically the dinner will become a cost but that's not the point, the point is the number.

£100 profit is the goal.

Every single day I need to make meaningful progress on this. Ideally, some money will come in and have a direct impact but we're not there yet. So what can I do to make a meaningful impact on that number?

The one big thing is to figure out if people are willing to pay for my product. To get there I need to talk to as many people as possible. To do that I will:

- Post my daily update on Reddit and LinkedIn, people might be interested in participating.

- Reach out to people on Reddit and LinkedIn who might give me an idea if my product is a good idea or not

- Figure out a way to increase my reach, maybe I should post on other platforms. Maybe I should run ads. Maybe I should go down the road and ask people if they have 20 minutes to answer questions.

With a goal set and a series of actions to make an impact on that goal, I'm ensuring that I'm focusing on what's in front of me.

I'm not worrying about what could be, I worry about what is.

I wish I'd done that 2 years ago.

Is still early days and I don't have anything that people will exchange their hard-earned money for. So I need a way to quantify my impact.

Figure out if people are willing to pay for the product directly translates to getting money in. Or at least I hope so.

That's the plan folks.

Over to you now, some questions:

• What do you think about picking profit as a metric?

• What do you think about using the ONE big thing way of doing things?

• Do you want to be part of a user interview?

• Are you enjoying this new formatting?

• Do you think I'm an idiot and I should go find a job?

• Let me know! Thanks for reading!