I ghosted a prospect for four months because I'd promised him something and got cold feet. Yesterday I sent him a two-minute draft. He wrote back asking for another conversation.
Four months. For something that took me 120 seconds to actually do.
This isn't rare rare. I see it in so many founders I coach, and I do it myself often enough that I've stopped beating myself up when I catch it.
Here's what happened in my head:
- I promised the guy a custom write-up.
- I sat down to do it. It felt bigger than I wanted it to feel and I just didn't have the energy. I closed the laptop.
- The next day, the task had grown a little in my head.
- By week two, it had grown a lot.
- By month two, the task was no longer "send the doc". It was "explain why I disappeared AND send the doc AND make it incredible enough to justify the wait."
That's how a 2-minute job becomes a 4-month job becomes a never job.
Founders love to talk about discipline and motivation and grit. Get up earlier. Want it more. Make your bed. Read another book about the habits of Navy SEALs.
That is almost never the real problem.
The real problem is friction. The task is unclear, or the next step is undefined, or the deliverable in your head is ten times bigger than the deliverable the other person actually wants.
I see this with sales follow-ups constantly. A founder has a hot prospect. The prospect asks for "more info." The founder sits down to write it and freezes, because in their head "more info" means a 14-slide custom deck. So they write nothing. For weeks. And then the deal is dead and they blame the market.
The prospect wanted three bullet points and a price.
Same thing with customer discovery. Founders won't book the calls because they haven't "finalized the script." There is no script. There is never a script. Get on the phone.
Same thing with hard conversations with co-founders, investors, employees. The conversation that's been living rent-free in your head for six weeks takes nine minutes when you finally have it.
So when you catch yourself not doing the thing, don't ask "why am I not motivated?" That question has no useful answer and it makes you feel like shit.
Ask "what is the smallest version of this I could send in the next ten minutes?"
Then send that.
The prospect I ghosted didn't need a masterpiece. He needed to hear from me. The two-minute draft was infinitely better than the perfect document I never wrote. Because it shipped.
Stop trying to want it more. Start making the next step smaller.