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What if you were looking at product market fit from the wrong perspective?

It’s quite a trap, isn’t it?

Most people become so immersed and involved in the product that they are building that they forget that they are building a tool for other people.

In this article we will tackle the ever lasting quest of achieving product market fit.

But we shall do so by analysing the strategies, tactics and tapping into the mindsets of the Lean Product Playbook, which is put together by Dan Olsen.

Dan Olsen created a framework for finding Product Market Fit.

His bestselling book “The Lean Product Playbook”, which is meant to be a “tactical how-to guide” for product people like you and me.

He built his own framework and methodology for achieving PMF and today we are going to look at it and understand how we can make use of it in our own product ventures.

The key element is:

The Product Market Fit Pyramid

It’s a construct that helps us visualise dependencies between the market and the product.
The pyramid is structured in five layers.

The first two layers are all about the market.

In order to tap into the first layer you have to ask yourself “who are we trying to address?” and “whose life are we trying to make better?”

This way you can find your target customer. People talk about demographics and psychographics and, most importantly, the “starving crowd”.

What’s the starving crowd? (It’s the market)

The term “Starving crowd” has first been used (as far as I know) by Gary Halbert, when he famously asked a question in a class in which he was teaching. He asked his students what is the most important thing that he needs if he has a hot dog stand.

The students gave all types of answers: high quality hot dogs, best stall, elaborate mix of sauces, etc.
None of those answers were correct.

The most important element in ANY BUSINESS that the business owner needs to be concerned with is having a starving crowd.

Alex Hormozi says that your target market (starving crowd) is made up of people who:

• Know they have a painful problem

• Actively want a solution

• Are already spending money trying to fix it

So, the first step is to assess what market you are in. This is important because the people in your market behave differently than people who are not in your market. They talk about things regarding their market, the market is important to them, they change as the market changes, etc.

Now, going a level deeper, we will delve into the first layer (from the bottom) of the pyramid. And this is the Target Customer.

This is the chunk of people from your market that you want to serve.

You are building what you are building for them, so it is urgent to get to know them properly. To understand their needs, their problems, their hopes and dreams and their behaviour within the market.

When you get to a deep enough level of intimacy with your target customer you will know exactly what will help them advance in their own businesses.

Not only will you know what helps them make money, save money or save time - but you will know precisely what they are responsive to.

You need to study them like your future depends on it (it does).

So we identified our target customer.

Good!

Now do the following exercise with me:

1. We list their needs on a lined notebook.

1. We focus on their needs which are already served and for which great products are already out there, which they are using.

2. We forget about those.

3. Now we’re left now with the needs that are underserved.

Got those?

Great!

You will keep them in your PRD document, or Market Study document, or whatever document you use but do not forget that this is a base layer from which we base our pyramid on, and everything else will be derived from these underserved needs!

Now that we know what the problems are we have to bring forward solutions via our…

We are basically answering the question “How will your product uniquely solve the target customer's underserved needs?”

…but unfortunately we have to answer a second question as well, which is “Why should I choose you over the alternatives?”

We won’t get to deep into this point, but the go to tactic to deploy is Bob Moesta’s JTBD framework.

The idea is that people are being PUSHED by the bad circumstances in which they find themselves. And your product has to be appealing to them as it pinpoints their problems and offers the desired outcomes to get them out of their discomfort.

However, there are 2 negative forces that keeps that client to switching to your product.

The first one is the friction of using something new. (“What if it doesn’t work for me?”, “What if it’s too complicated?”, “What if it requires too much effort?”, “What if there are hidden costs?”, “What if it is not available in my language or my region?”, etc.)
You have to answer any question the prospect might have and eliminate any uncertainty they might have about your product.

The second one is comfort.
Your prospect has already been accustomed with the way they are, and you have to list the negatives of them not making a change - and the positive outcomes that will follow after they make the change and use your product.

Again, get your notebook, and for each these 4 sections, list everything on your mind that you think applies to your target customers.

After you’re done, go and talk to them!

You might find new things that haven’t even crossed your mind. You might find that some of your points are actually not relevant, and that some are.

You can only speculate until you check with the real world and validate your assumptions.

…there is more to discuss about designing the product and the methods that can be used there to insure efficiency with the other parts of the pyramid. We will explore this in a future article about designing the product. I will link the article here.

Recap - Using the Pyramid

The iterative process to move through the pyramid:

1. Determine your target customer (Layer 1).

2. Identify underserved customer needs (Layer 2).

3. Define your value proposition (Layer 3).

4. Create your user experience design (Layer 4).

5. Specify your MVP feature set (Layer 5).

   …and last but not least:

6. Test your product with real customers, gather feedback, and iterate downward or upward to improve fit.

Next Steps

Now that you understand the progression on the PMF pyramid, I encourage you to brainstorm with your team and identify each part of the pyramid.

It is useful to include it in your PRD, as this information will change as your engage your market more and learn new things about them. Sometimes it’s not even the market that changes, but the industry itself!
Other times, the technological landscape changes and it affects your market, and consequently your PMF pyramid.

So always be on the lookout for new information, or ‘black swans’ as they call it. Bits of information that change everything about what you thought you knew about your market.

The PMF pyramid is not a rigid set of rules.
It’s a research document that is to be used as a compass!

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One Punch Man is a famous Japanese manga and anime.

It’s about this bald dude who is always unhappy and bored. And that is because he (as a superhero) is so powerful that he’s able to beat enemies with just one single punch. So he never faces any challenges. That is his hardship. Boredom.

It seems like a good problem to have!

At first sight, nobody would ever complain about being too powerful and capable right? Everybody wants to be that good that they can defeat any adversity or enemy in one second with zero effort. Because that means that you could accomplish anything and get whatever you want!

But our japanese hero is really suffering.

His "hell” is his powerful state. And we can learn a couple of things from that and apply them to our own lives.

Growth Through Challenges

Happiness.

What an elusive thing, am I right?

The reason it’s so elusive is that we have perverted that word so much that we don’t know how to use it properly. And that is quite insane (…or rather, it’s a sliver of insanity)

We all have been conditioned to seek happiness through quick fixes. And we all have been conditioned to seek permanent happiness. The final win. Like in a football match when “your” team wins and everybody screams from the top of their lungs and everybody dances and sings and hugs each other. It looks like victory. And it is ONE victory. But it’s not permanent.

There were these final scenes in movies where main hero of the story walks into the sunset with the girl he loves and having achieved whatever he had to achieve. And then the credits rolled. And you knew that the hero is in a perfect state of victory and contentfulness somewhere.

And that is how we view happiness nowadays. Like a product to consume. Like sugar. Something that we need and we can never get enough of. Which is great for the industry - but bad for the consumer!

Saitama - our japanese hero from One Punch Man™ shows us that happiness is not found in supreme power. First of all, it’s not happiness that we need. It’s contentfulness and fun. And deep in our hearts we knew that since we were children. If we’re having fun, we’re happy. If nothing is wrong and we are content with what we achieved today, we are more than fine.

Fun comes from experiencing a state of flow (which I will cover in a separate essay). We don’t need to go into the science of neurotransmitters and brain chemistry. We can use simple terms: do stuff that make you proud! You will get the hang of it and will enjoy it. States of flow are game-changers. If you can get into a flow everyday, and as soon as possible, you move towards your objectives and you win at life.

Just like that.

Imagine how our hero would feel if he would find worthy opponents that would pose a challenge for him. The funny part is that this is actually his challenge that he is facing: finding meaning in all of this.

Of course, he feels upset about having to face this situation. We could say that he feels “challenged” (ironic, right?)

And that is what we should remember out of this. That feeling challenged is good - as long as we are in the right challenge that enables our growth. We have becomed fooled by the dopamine inducing routines of the modern life that we think that everything good should taste like strawberry ice cream, arrive in 5 minutes like an uber request, and maybe even send us a phone notification that says “Congratulations, you achieved happiness!”

No.

That is brainless consumerism - not meaningful life living.

Be grateful for your challenges. And go at them! They will help you grow.

You know which challenges to take!

Emotional Stability

Emotions are your intuitions’ reactions.

They are like errors in computer science. They are there to guide you. So don’t ignore them.

However, they usually signal that something within you is not optimal and needs to change. Your inner operating system is probably faulty. Maybe you are cluttering your to-do list with an impossible number of tasks. Maybe you are not throwing yourself at the right challenge. Maybe you are going in circles and not progressing at some important task.

When your logical thinking isn’t fruitful, your intuition will give you the clues you need.

The best thing that you can do to set your sights on the best path and not waste time worrying about things that you can’t control is living a process-oriented life - not an event-oriented life.

It’s a life where you see events as checkpoints. You intent to hop from event to event and expect that to make you feel good and make you feel content.

That is not optimal. Because you cannot feel generally content about life since there will always be other events that you will long to reach. Also, you cannot have a clear roadmap. The roadmap changes respective to new information that you gain in your journey.

It’s easy to speak about history in terms of events that changed everything. But explorers, kings and conquerers did not schedule their victories. They improvised with what they had. They persisted and pushed and sometimes they won.

Being in first person, you can set some checkpoints, but binding those checkpoints to life events and personal content and happiness is a mistake. Because your job will never be done.

I lived this as well! And sometimes I still do…

“I will be happy when I move into a new apartment.”

“I will be all good when I find a better job.”

“If I can get through this deadline I will be eternally grateful and will never stress out ever again.”

These are all delusions…

Even when you succeed, you give yourself a pat on the back and feel good. But you can either diminish all your productivity - because you need to feel like you won, so you can’t worry about anything else (as people say “you can’t be bothered”).

…or you don’t enjoy success too much because you have to jump to the next checkmark. While there are another 5 or 10 checkmarks waiting in line…

Living an event-oriented life is a recipe for discontent and it’s not fun.

…however, there is a recipe for content and fun: the process-oriented life.

Imagine you are swimming.

You don’t have time to stop and look around, because you have to keep yourself to the surface. You are heading in a direction. You have water in your mouth and nose and eyes. Your heart is racing and your body actively paddling your whole weight in the water.

Isn’t that just great?

Or riding a bycicle - looking straight in the direction where you are heading. Maintaining balance but not worrying about every step along the way. Just being fixated on the path and on the destination is enough.

Jogging, working out at the gym, playing a musical instrument, talking with people you enjoy while expressing yourself and having fun conversations.

Those activities are FUN. They aren’t easy by no means. Even walking was difficult and posed a big challenged when you were a small kid, just growing out of the age of toddler and making your first steps. Falling was actually dangerous!

But when you undertake these activities, they don’t seem difficult at all. You are too focused to overthink or to think any bad thoughts at all. You are having too much fun to have time to ask yourself if this is worth it. And you are focused on getting somewhere or getting through so you aren’t doubting your destination.

The main key in living a process oriented life getting into a zone where you are using your intuition and your instincts. Like a panther that hunting in the jungle. You aren’t imagining your life and mapping it out. You are living it in real time. It may not seem intelectual - since you’re not doing a lot of thinking - but it is very intelligent actually - because you are tuned into your current reality and changing your life step by step.

Being a Superhero Helps

Saitama, our japanese superhero that is struggling with the burder of being “overpowered” has done something right from the beginning.

You see, he was so passionate about being a superhero, that he followed his path to become one.

And I’m very sure he lived a process-oriented lifestyle, not an event-oriented one.

The takeaway here is that he chose to do something he had interest in. Something he can brag afterwards of being his “calling”. Something he wouldn’t change if he could, because he would chose to be a superhero every day. That is what he does actually. Nobody forces him to put on his superhero suit and go fight dangerous monsters. Also, it’s easy for him now, but at the beginning, it must have been incredibly difficult and also dangerous (like walking is for a toddler).

But he persisted. He wanted it that much. He used will power. He never let go of that dream, until that dream and reality weren’t too different.

How To Slay At Life

Please make sure you are choosing the right objectives and the right challenges. They will be difficult. All challenges are. They will bring things that you didn’t expect. And that’s alright. Being impatient and frustrated would be like climbing a steep slippery hill - uncomfortable and reaaaaaaaly hard.

But if you are able to tune in into your activity by embracing the challenge with all its ups and downs, you approach life from a different angle. One that works.

Like Saitama, our japanese hero, had it super easy for him. He could defeat any foe with a single punch. He had life on super easy level. But he didn’t cheer and savour every second of it because that was not the point. His training was arduous, but the went through it every day.

Don’t seek easiness. Seek objectives that you will be happy to have. Seek a path that you want to walk, and just walk it, even if it gets bumpy. Seek a destination that is worth it.

Thinking about things in terms of their difficulty does no good. Don’t chose impossible things - don’t set yourself up for failure. But do push the bar!

The thing is that easy things like fixing yourself a snack or watching a netflix show do not make you feel content in your heart. And difficult things that are worth it are hard, but will force you to grow. Don’t follow level of difficulty, that is not a good indicator of the outcome.

Also, doing only easy things will stop your growth and will make you shallow and closed-minded leading to a low-quality life deprived of fun. Saitama knew that. That’s why we lamented over his being “overpowered”.

Easy things, hard life. Hard things, easy life.

Force yourself to grow!

You choose your identity and act accordingly.

This is the simple basis on living a process oriented life. Don’t overthink your actions. Sure, you need to make plans. But take all plans with a grain of salt because when the map doesn fit the road, you need to follow the road, not the map.

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The one overlooked secret to doing more

I have always had a love-hate relationship with the word “work”.

And that is because “work” can mean so many things. It can be a fun new activity that I have interest in. It can be an activity that I am accustomed to, like coding, but in the context of a brand new project. It can be graft work, which is effortful or boring. And in the end, the most important thing is WHO you are working with.

However, the most important trait that defines “work” is doing something useful. Creating progress. It shouldn't be about effort. It should be about outcomes. Thats's why work can sometimes be fun and other times dreadful.

At the point when you dissaciate work and progress you are in danger of:

• diminishing returns

• diminishing skills in an ever-evolving industry

• alienation from the new opportunities that you already have the skills necessary to capitalise on

Work can take many shapes but one thing is for certain: work takes time and requires some effort. Even if it’s enjoyable. It will drain a portion of your energy. Therefore, no matter the type of work we take on ourselves, we are spending from our daily credits of 16 waking hours (assuming 8 hours of sleep) and 100% energy levels (assuming good rest)

What I noticed in others

I noticed 2 patterns:

The Grinder

The first one is that people carry on taking the same type of work on and on and on. They might enjoy it. But they get used to it. When they get used to it they might not even know if they enjoy it anymore or not. and that is the double edged sword of specialising in something. Are they doing it because they are passionate about it OR because they simply have become efficient at it?

Whichever the case, they don't expand their possibilities because they don't need more possibilities. They succumb in the comfort of a routine. Just because it's “enough”. And that is going to come back to them like a boomerang and hit them in the head because humans are made to widen their understanding and expand.

They are impoverishing their lives because they are not broadening their horizons.

The Dabbler

This person takes on work for the sake of something new. And after the novelty wears out and it's time to move onto something new, they start from 0 somewhere else. This is suboptimal because they have built the necessary skills, connections and acumen of a certain type of job. Instead of getting more done and establishing themselves i the field, they go to start something new and leave everythibg behind.

They are impoverishing their lives because they are not allowing themselves to build tall.

The Solution

Industries are not siloed anymore as they used to be. And most skills nowadays are transferrable. And the connections that you already have already trust you. And you know their areas of activity and what issues they are facing. They will also speak openly about them and actively seek solutions.

The answer that I am bringing forward is automation. There is this pandemic of automating everything from the get-go using AI technology.

This is not always a good idea.

And that is because at the beginning you need to be involved and adaptable with the tasks that need to be done. It's actually research more than it is work. You see what your clients responding well to, and what they respond negatively to. You improve the process in order for them to get more of the stuff they respond positively to. It's forst and foremost about serving them. The second step is optimising what you are doing for them so they are as satisfied as you can make them without compromising on your offer and boundaries.

There is more to it!

By studying how to better serve your clients, you get an insight into what they need AFTER they receive your services. So you get an idea of how you can help them by catering those services to them and increasing your cashflow from serving them. I am talking about the so-called “upsells”.

Some upsells make more sense after your main service has been delivered. Others make sense from the beginning. So do optimise your revenue strategy accordingly.

But returning to automation…

You can automate work by:

• hiring VAs

• -implementing AI agents into your workflow

• integrating automations

Doing that requires clearly defining your process and then automating the steps within it.

This is what business is about in the end. Automation.

Conclusion

Don't fall into the fallacy of having to settle down into doing graft work all your life. Becoming a “specialist” in one area is a risky thing because technology is always advancing. Bringing new pieces to the chessboard.

Effort is not the enemy. Unless you don't automate your tasks.

Expanding might seem unreachable because of present situations.But those situations are temporary and are to be dealt with. Please don't hinder yourself because you feel you don't have options.Because you do.

A life of poverty is a life where you are caught going in circles and getting nowhere. The opposite of that is a growth-oriented life.

I realised I don't even know what “being passionate” means anymore. I'm not sure I ever did.

It sounds very romantic. To be passionate about something. Sounds like something everybody should strive to achieve. Sounds like happiness.

The first problem on passion

Passion is momentum.

You perform activities passionately only after you have done the difficult, unpleasant, effortful and boring ones. Those come first.

After waking up unwillingly.

After worrying compulsively.

After having the “I will not take this anymore, I have to do something!” moment.

After trying - and not even being too certain if you're even doing the right thing.

After failing. And then being sad about it.

After thinking obsessively about that thing you are trying to “passionately” succeed at.

After finally connecting (some of) the dots.

After finding courage to try again.

After finally succeeding - while it required you to change from within.

After things finally start to flow and you actually start enjoying “the thing”

Passion is not immediate, you see. It's not like turning on Netflix, pressing play on a show you already know you like and then letting entertainment flow naturally. Activities (and work) require your involvement. They require trial and error. You need to jump in the cold water first. And only THEN you MIGHT get swimming.

Talking about passion and doing “what you’re passionate about” is very misdirecting, because a passion is not a thing. It's a state of being. It's the state of flow.

Don't forget that as a child simply walking was a challenge that you had to persist through with trial and error. When we do things that are easy to us and we see the fruits of our labour it's easy to forget that we put work to get there.

The second problem on passion

The problem with passion is that it's a very feeble thing.

You might enjoy something like a movie, for example. But how many times can you watch the same movie without it becoming predictable? …boring even.

What more can that movie offer you?

Our brains and senses have been designed to detect change. That's why we don't like boredom and feel like we are wasting our time when there is nothing exciting going on. That is what excitement is: unpredictability.

Our passions change as easily as they first appeared. You might have been passioned about drawing when you were a kid. And then forget about it and pick up something else. Just like you might have been passionate about going to a new park you discovered in a new city you moved in. How long does that excitement last before it turns into comfort?

As you see, when we speak about superficial things, “passion” is very feeble and short-lived. And when we speak about bigger more significant things. Those have a lot of baggage (effort, turmoil, challenges) that comes along with a bit of passion on the mountain top. Which you can get to ONLY by climbing the mountain.

From the bottom.

The third problem on passion

Passion comes by itself.

When you try to pursue it, it's difficult to catch. Because it comes along with the process while your not paying attention to it. It's like happiness. And fun.

You need an objective to follow. And while pursuing that objective you are focused and making use of your brain, of your senses and your skills. You are passionate when you are playing the game, not when you win. The win might give you an extra “feel-good feeling” and rewards. But passion is recognised in hindsight and it makes itself noticed when you are focused and immersed.

The trap here is, just like in many other cases, the “quick pill solution” that the nature of our society is pushing in the collective consciousness. The quick fix, as if there were one. But in truth, it's not a “quick fix” that is being sold to you. It's the desire for a quick fix. With the purpose of rising the demand for a quick fix that doesn't exist.

The effort is to produce quick fix junkies, which are short-sighted and fast spenders. The good things in life aren't the ones that instantly appear in front of us. The good things are the ones that we built ourselves with time. The ones that we see changing in front of our lives every day, bit by bit.

A skill. Friends and family. A business. A home. Mindset. A portfolio of artistic works of art. A collection of non-artistic works. A journey that unfolds more and more each day.

The key to getting passionate about something is not to know what it is and go there (like a thirsty person to an oasis). The key is sticking with something long enough until it hits checkpoints. And then realising how far you have come.

FACT: Neediness is a mindset

You see, if you pursue something because you have a hollowness that you are trying to fill. That hollowness does not go away.

Pursuing passion in order to get a fix will not make whatever you are running from decrease, it will only feed the hunger and will make you chase it more. Like a zombie.

In such cases you have to get to the root cause of whatever it is you are avoiding. You have to set some goals that will improve your life as much as possible. Then, you have to make progress towards it, checkpoint by checkpoint. And there's more to the journey than the destination. Don't jump to the “tl;dr”, but live through the experience.

As long as you accept that all experiences are transformative and that you change, do the right thing (for yourself, for others and for your inner sense of what's the right thing to do) and you will attain temporary moments of passion. Just like birds throw themselves from heights and flap their wings like crazy until they grasp the air around them and use it to fly. Fearlessly.

The fourth problem on passion

It's increasingly difficult to replicate.

The novelty (new-ness) that comes with each experience is a big factor on the thrill that brings us to “the passion state”. Because it's like a game. And it's fun. Adapting to new circumstances, surpassing our fears, attaining objectives. Life is not too different from a game.

By industrialising passion, we take away the soul from it.

That is why we need to be immersed in it and not treat passion like a hamburger that we just need to buy and consume in order to enjoy the intricacy of passion.

To put it simply, passion is a state of flow combined with persistence and improvement.

Craft + Flow = Passion 💫

And it cannot be simplified in a recipe, because that would take out the magic of it!

The fifth problem on passion

Please think of passion as flow from now on.

The media is oversimplifying passion constraining it into a small box. When it truth, it can be attained in multiple forms.

Here are some of the types of passion:

• Creative passion

This one is linked to the process of being creative and it is linked with the joy of having materialised something that you can call “yours”.

Examples abound from painting a painting, recording a song, building ikea furniture or simply cooking.

Humans are inherently creative and get happiness from making things. And even though we can use software and the everpresent phones in our pockets to create virtual things, creating something physical feels more palpable. It's primal and hardwired into our brains.

We love to create stuff!

• Social passion

Humans are social creatures.

We belong in networks of people - tribes - which are sometimes large like a classroom, larger like a city or a country or a discord group and other times can be smaller and more intimate.

We get happiness from having positive impact on other people. From making other people happy. Because that means that we are being a healthy active network and our tribe is doing well. As primal as the word “tribe” is, it is ubiquitous and will never be obsolete. Networks grow larger and larger and are meant to mingle its nodes into new combinations. Be it social media networks, countries, etc. Everything can be seen as a network as long as it has multiple “nodes” interconnected and there is life present in that network.

Humans are made to network!

• “Making a change” passion (Passionate about having an impact)

There have been studies made on babies that they don't develop properly if ignored. Whereas babies that are interacted with have more active brains and also develop empathy.

It doesn't apply just to babies.

There is a sense of happiness and meaning when we do things that make a difference. And when you discover that you can affect things around you that is when you start experimenting.

For me, having grown up from childhood it has been surreal how much I can be part of the world outside of my home and my school. And how REAL that world is. Whereas as a kid who only knows the boundaries of the town in which he's living in, everything seemed foreign and far away. The internet has connected us more but it still hasn't seemed as real as it started to when I moved cities/countries and explored other people's cultures. And while seeking differences (because of so much diversity) I ended up finding more similarities than anything else. It has been a wholesome experience so far and still is.

I also felt that the world has been more connected since the dark days of covid. It felt like all of the countries on the planet were on the same team for once and that each one was important. Team humanity!

More so, every day I discover how interconnected the governments, economies and companies around the world are. Which are all trading and interacting. With the amount of technology we harness today, it has never been easier to interact meaningfully and have positive impact. All is needed is a bit of time and effort.

• Skillful passion.

When you do things that you’re really good at, it's easy to get into flow. It's not even like jumping into cold water, it's more like jumping into warm water. Like playing an instrument you love or riding a bike.

And along with the familiarity of your craft there is also the experimentation part where you try new things out or explore new ways of doing things. The thrill of discovering would count as “exploratory passion”, but since you already know what you are doing we will fit it into skillful passion.

• Pioneering/engineering passion.

You know the times when you have to make due with the tools that you have? That's not a bad thing as long as you can figure out a solution. Even more, if you thoroughly have fun and enjoy the process then that's where the passion comes into play.

There's some creativity involved as well, so there is the element of play that will keep you playing this game as if it wasn't a task, but a challenge.

Conclusion

Don't search for passion!

You will not find it like that…

Passion is something that gets created from persistent effort until the effort doesn't feel like effort anymore. You must improve and change and fall in love with the process. You must make it yours and harness it and THEN when you know the ins and outs and the shortcuts and pitfalls of whatever it is you are practicing, only then will passion start to sprout. AFTER you started having fun in the process. Not before.

I remember vividly when I had picked up “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” by Robert Kyosaki. An amazing book that struck a chord with me multiple times. If you haven't read it you're missing out. Read it!

The most important thing I learnt is the definition of “Asset” and “Liability”.

An asset is something that puts money in your pocket. Like a business that runs (mostly) by itself. Or an apartment that you charge rent for each month.

A liability is something that takes money from your pocket. Like a vehicle. Or a smoking habit.

It's important to revisit basics about life, business, law, etc. especially since these things are not being taught in school. They are taught in University courses. But not with practical application. And I thoroughly believe that theory is what makes you understand things and practice is what makes you remember them.

I think that's how the human mind works.

What is a business?

A business is being active as an economical agent that makes transactions. With the objective of getting more money in than spending - so it makes a profit!

And you can't just get money paid to you randomly, you must offer something of value to others in order to get money for it. You sell products or perform services for that money that you charge.

You have a catalogue of stuff that you can sell (products or services).

As an employee you are still performing services for money under contracted deals and, of course, under the legislation on the government in which you operate.

Robert Kyiosaki marks these economical agent as the following: (ESBI)

• Employee

• Sole trader

• Business

• Investor

The last 2 involve assets. The first 2 involve work (labour) and are constrained by time. Which is a limit that cannot be surpassed unless you act as a Business owner or Investor.

Th problem is that a lot of people think of their business as being an asset, but what passes the chasm from work to asset is automation and scale. You have to skew the output from the input of your work and time you put in.

Business that is actually just sole-trading

A business might facade as a business when it is actually just work being done as a sole trader when:

• each deliverable implies work that is not repeatable and thus cannot be automated.

• each deliverable takes X amount of YOUR time. Therefore delivering 5 of those will require 5x your time.

example: you paint the interior of a house for your client. It takes you 5 hours (plus transport, buying tools and paint, etc.)

Now, if you have 5 clients with 5 interiors to be painted, it will take you 25 hours to paint them (plus 5x transport, plus 5x tools and 5x paint, etc.)

This is unfortunately not scalable.

• for each new client you get, you have to seek out potential clients. marketing activities are hard to pin-point to an exact time-frame or an exact number of actions (unless it is properly automated)

• (income) growth is not predictable (because nothing else mentioned above is not predictable) and thus cannot be accelerated.

• your involvement is always required - or as other people call it: you are working IN the business not ON the business.

So, by flipping these 5 points we can get the shape of what a REAL business looks like.

What a REAL business looks like

A real business is a self-sufficient mechanism that preferably grows and sometimes works (accurately) like clockwork.

• each deliverable is templated. With templates, schemas, instructions, SOPs (standards of procedure), etc.

• time is scalable. This comes back to automating tasks. Automate tasks using AI, software scripts, etc. Make the human-involvement as little as possible. Then hire a person to do the non-automateable tasks. A VA could be enough in most cases.

The litmus test is the following: If delivering 1 or 20 deliverables takes you roughly the same amount of time, then you are not constrained by time.

Could you deliver 100 deliverables? Could you if you hired a VA or 2? Ask yourself these questions.

• automate marketing! Marketing is extremely important. Even that is an understatement. Marketing is the process in which you communicate with your market. You may update them. You may educate them. You may showcase work to them. But you MUST be obtaining NEW clients through them. Marketing is the tool through which you do your prospecting.

On that note, you can improve only on what you measure. So it is a good idea to treat marketing as an activity separate from your business. It's when you get to talk about your business, your industry, your successes, your learnings and anything else related to your business. As long as you keep your marketing relevant to your target market (aka be “customer-oriented”, or “customer-focused” or even better “customer-obsessed”)

PRO TIP: Being focused on the customer in your marketing efforts will remove the guilt of automating business tasks and the false sense that you are treating your customer like an object. The deliverable is tge object. The customer is ultimately a human or a group of humans which you WILL cater to with your marketing efforts (which should still be automated with SOPs - but will still involve your human touch, so don't worry about it!)

2nd PRO TIP: Marketing efforts are usually not going to be fully automated because you still have to be involved in the marketing conversations (unless you keep repeating the same thing over and over). So, a lot of the time marketing efforts will still be constrained by time …BUT it has a new effect in play: it compounds. All those blog articles you wrote in the past are still unique and valuable. All those email courses are still being read and utilised. All those previous social media posts are still being read and utilised. The difference is that your marketing amplifies with THE SIZE OF YOUR CONTENT and THE REACH (the number of people consuming that content per week) - so even though your marketing will still be time constrained, it becomes more powerful with each iteration. Just like what going to the gym does to your muscles!

• OK, so your business operations are now 1. automated and 2. scalable. Now that your marketing is templated (and can be measured and improved on a weekly basis) your business input and output is turning from improvisation based on luck into mathematical numbers! Now you can predict income on a yearly basis and measure it on a monthly basis. There will still be opportunities and threats, but that's fine. You can attach a figure next to your companies income and you can justify a price to sell it for, if you choose to do that. And if not, you have built this automated mechanism which delivers valuable deliverables to your target market and receives regular money transactions into its bank account. Yay!

This leads us to our last point of real-business characteristics:

• The business does not need you in order to function. Think of it like a cruise ship. It still needs a captain to steer it, to make sure everything is running correctly. But it can be left on-course and the motors, software and crew will ensure that everything is working like clockwork.

OK, great! Conclusions….

In order to get from a sole-trader situation to a business shindig you need to prepare yourself and then do the work on the 5 points mentioned above.

This “work on yourself” includes:

• being knowledgeable in your craft.

• the fear of templating - not every nail you nail has to be artistically nailed. This takes a toll on your peace of mind actually *and your precious time). You need to use your focus on other areas. Start templating gradually as soon as you can. Progress will grow exponentially. It's simple math!

• the fear of not letting go and letting things run on their own - not every process will run successfully or smoothly. But there MUST BE repeatable processes. Do not fear small failures. Fear NOT DOING THE RIGHT THING (in the grand scheme of things)

• discipline to follow the SOPs. You can improve the repeatable process. But there MUST BE a repeatable process.

• track, measure, improve. And only then will you be able to PREDICT GROWTH.

Turning work into a business is the natural way for societal progress. This is why it will all be done eventually by someone, if not YOU then someone else will turn the work you do into a business. And then into technology. (Think how transport has evolved from walking to riding to driving to ordering an uber, or how information sharing has turned from talking-and-memorising into writing then into typing then into libraries and then into the internet).

Human society is evolving through businesses and technology. There should be better connotations and importance attributed to business.

As we are all living in the age of speed, advanced technology (supposedly) and fast solutions, there is one pitfall that has been put on overdrive by the power of the internet and has grown proportionally with it.

The pitfall I am talking about is “finding shortcuts”.

People want the results. They want wealth, they want athletic bodies, they want satisfying relationships and great connections, but they don't want the work that comes with it. And unfortunately, every metaphorical “pill” that can solve their problems and bring about a lavish lifestyle is more attractive to us than actually putting in the work to materialise what we want in our lives.

We are easy-fix junkies.

Why are we easy-fix junkies?

It's a natural instinct to preserve energy.

Wolves do this all the time when hunting. Polar bears as well. Our energy is limited, even though it's rechargeable. So we are wired to contain as much of it as we can for the long run. Having depleted energy levels in the old days would mean danger of not being able to hunt and eat or to run away from predators.

And even today it's better to be full of energy and feel strong and capable during the day. Tired people make mistakes and worry and have negative thoughts. Your brain functions better when it is well rested (and well fed). So it makes perfect sense that we have an inclination towards not making loads of effort.

And you don't have to have a masters degree in mathematics to understand that quick wins are great. Somewhere deep within us we crave quick wins. Because Quick wins are a sign that we are on a fruitful path and that we should replicate those wins. Also, since they are QUICK wins, it means that they are affordable for us and replicable. The thinking is good! The problem is that this inherent thinking is hijacked by fast information. It stimulates our instant gratification and makes us feel like we “hacked” some big aspect of life.

But if there is no barrier to entry and there are loads of people making use of the same “hack”, it's no hack at all.

Are all quick wins bad?

Definitely not!

There are genuine hacks out there, loops in the system, untapped demand for products and services that can be monetised, brilliant ideas that can be put to good use, powerful technologies, etc.

If you do find actual quick wins, then by all means, use them!

Let's take vibe-coding for example:

The vibe-coding example

For people who do not know what vibe-coding is - it is the process of building apps, websites, and anything that can be built by using programming skills WITH the aid of AI that writes a bunch of the code for you.

You can fine-tune it. You can expand on it. You can “engineer your prompt”. And the main idea is that you can focus on the structure and functionality of your project and most importantly on the big picture.

You still need engineering skills in order to “vibe-code”. But you don't need to spend huge amounts of time finicking with syntax or best-practices or memorising code syntax. If you don't have a grasp on how everything works, then without a doubt your project will collapse. But if you have the right skill-set, then you can use AI to propel the progress of you coding project without letting the speed of it confuse you and ultimately make things worse for your project - like a speeding Formula 1 car.

Vibe-coding is a skill by itself.

And AI will create loads of jobs where you have to juggle between automation or content/code creation at breakneck speed along with the disciplined required to understand, organise it and optimise it.

I think this is a key skill in the age of AI.

How do quick solutions make you go in circles?

Shallow solutions create more problems.

Lack of direction and of a clear destination will lead to many detours. And this is the biggest risk - not having a clear destination in mind.

Alice: “Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”

The Cheshire Cat: “That depends a good deal on where you want to get to.”

Alice: “I don't much care where.”

The Cheshire Cat: “Then it doesn't much matter which way you go.”

Alice: “...So long as I get somewhere.”

The Cheshire Cat: “Oh, you're sure to do that, if only you walk long enough.”

The quote above is from “Alice In Wonderland”. We can argue that we are living in wonderland today. The world feels magical. Not just because of AI. But there are loads of technological innovations and places in the world where it could be applied.

The Solution: Checkpoints

What is a checkpoint?

It's a goal. A goal from which you can never fall backwards because you gained experience, connections and (preferably) assets.

Assets can be businesses, real estate investments and anything else that puts money into your bank account.

The difference between “going in the right direction” or “doing the right thing” - which is what we have been trained for in school and jobs and focussing on hitting a checkpoint is that a checkpoint is an end goal. It is a means for an end. With clear benefits. And then you will be off to your next checkpoint.

Take time every day to visualise where you want to get to next. Think about it. Think about what you need - an amount of money, proximity to a place, connections to an industry, etc.

Then come up with ways to obtain those things. You will start thinking about these things unconsciously. Your brain will do the work for you. Your mind will be open to ingenious ideas and your eyes will be open to opportunities.

Without checkpoints, you can have all the opportunities in front of you. You wouldn't identify them because you wouldn't be looking for them.

But if you know EXACTLY what you want... at times it may seem like the whole universe is putting the right stepping stones in your path.

P.S. Make a vision board

Write down some things that you want to bring into your life this year. The most important 10. Then google some images. Write down some details. And check that vision board every day, just to never forget what you want and what you are going for.

Cheers!