Congratulations………you’ve decided that you want to run a startup.
It’s exiting isn’t it.
But wait here are some things that probably nobody has told you.
When you were employed, you did what you were told (I hope you did).
That means that you were in tactical mode. You had a direction and you knew what to do.
When you finished the work you asked for more work etc.
You didn’t worry too much if the work was really needed or if it added value to the customer.
You may have thought about this for a moment but then decided that it wasn’t your role to worry about things like that.
Now you are a founder or co-founder then things have changed. You now have to do a lot of strategic thinking.
Who are the customers
What do they want
Will they pay
What business model do I use
How much money do we have
How can I get customers interested
Are we working on the right things
What prototypes will we need
All of the above are focused on doing the right things at the right time.
Making the jum to being more strategic can be hard if you have always done what you were told to do.
In the old days it was easy…….you had a list of things to do and you knew how t do them.
Now your day often starts with a blank page and you have nobody telling you what to do.
The easy way out is to focus on what you have been good at and do that…..often this will be building the product or maybe it will be marketing or whatever.
My best advice is to learn how to wear two hats.
One is the employee hat………you do what you are told to do.
The other hat is the boss hat………you have to work out what to do and when to do it.
Make sure that you structure your week (or day) to allow time for the Boss Mode.
Being the boss may mean dreaming, researching, reading, networking, talking to customers etc.
Allow yourself time to go for a walk or a run or whatever you need to do to think clearly.
Once you have clarity of what to do then you can go into Employee Mode but block time in your calendar for Boss Mode.