Your daily LinkedIn post idea, by The Content Lab

Question: Startup Misconception?

Post Template:

Hook:

This year, Lumiere’s revenue grew 7 digits, and 90% of what I did didn’t matter at all.

Tease:

If I look back, only two things I did this year mattered

1/ We acquired a company last year in July. That’s been a success.

2/ We revamped our onboarding flow for our internship program, Ladder.

That’s it. Pretty much everything else I did was a waste of time. It didn’t move the needle.

Value:

One thing I hate about startup culture is this obsession with the “grind.” People glorify the 70-hour-a-week warrior. They love the idea of the grinding founder: He’s missing parties, he smells kind of funky, his love life is non-existent. But he is GRINDING and that’s what he needs to succeed. But, I’ve found that exceptionally hard work doesn't always lead to exceptional results.

Take my acquisition last year, which contributed almost half of our growth. I probably spent 40 hours on that in total last summer. 40 hours of mine were worth way more than the 2000 others I spent working.

Now let’s be honest, I'm not some chill, 4 hour a week type of guy. I also work hard.

Every week I have meetings from 8:00 am to 10:00 pm. I grind. I’m putting in 70-hour weeks consistently. But this past year I looked back on what I worked on - I wrote down every big initiative I put my time into. And really, only two things moved the needle.

Two things I worked on for a combined 100 hours contributed to 90% of my impact.

That's taught me two things:

1/ Some things are not 20% more important, they are 100x more important. The key is finding those things and doing those. Then don’t do anything else.

2/ We (please read: I) often fill our time to feel busy. That’s ok. But, just know that being busy is about YOU, it's not necessarily about the company.

CTA:

This year, I’m trying to spend less time doing random shit. And more time doing the 10% of tasks that matter.

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