The name of my company is “Obvious Startup Advice”, but my close friend (Joseph Logan) preaches that advice doesn’t work…
How come we have so contradicting approaches?
Well, I work with early-stage startups whereas Joseph works in the growth-stage.
In an early stage of a startup, all the work should be focused externally.
Until you find product/market fit, the CEO should be maniacally focused on understanding the market — their problems, their opportunities, their language, their constraints.
That’s a full-time job.
Seriously, prior to product/market fit, running a company is a benevolent dictatorship.
One person with a dream, supported by a small team of co-conspirators, all racing against the clock to figure out what the market really wants.
The ability to communicate a strong vision trumps great management skills at that stage, because everything boils down to getting punched in the face and getting up again.
Once you’re able to close qualified prospects predictably and reliably, it’s time to build a world-class executive team to scale, and most of the CEO’s work should be focused internally, on leading the team
At the stage where I coach founders & CEOs, it often looks like this:
“𝑶𝒉 𝒈𝒐𝒅, 𝒐𝒉 𝒈𝒐𝒅, 𝒑𝒍𝒆𝒂𝒔𝒆 𝒅𝒐𝒏’𝒕 𝒅𝒐 𝒕𝒉𝒂𝒕. 𝑰’𝒗𝒆 𝒕𝒓𝒊𝒆𝒅 𝒕𝒉𝒂𝒕 𝒇𝒐𝒖𝒓 𝒕𝒊𝒎𝒆𝒔 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒊𝒕 𝒏𝒆𝒗𝒆𝒓 𝒘𝒐𝒓𝒌𝒔. 𝑯𝒆𝒓𝒆’𝒔 𝒘𝒉𝒚…”
Early stage founders need actionable information, right now, to stay alive longer and maximize the their chances of figuring their business out.
And most of that information is pretty obvious in retrospect — either you already knew it and just needed to hear someone else say it, or once you hear it, you know it can’t be any other way.
I’m pretty amazing at this.
But I’m not your guy once it’s time to tackle questions like:
→ How do I best develop my skills as a leader?
→ How do I build a world-class executive team?
→ How do I best manage the team?
Once you earned the right to tackle those questions, advice alone is insufficient.
The work is more about you. ‘Why’ will matter more than ‘what’.
My work is focused on keeping you alive long enough to win.
Once you’re past that stage - I’m not your guy anymore, Joseph's your guy.