Adapt or Endure? A Founder's Guide to Navigating Changing Circumstances
We can't predict the future, so why adhere to a specific goal? If you're open to adaptation, you have a better chance of getting what you really want out of life.
Welcome to A Founder’s Life for Me! I’m Alek, and based on my experiences building companies, I provide practical recommendations on how to build your company and career.
The path to achieving your goals is not always what you expect.
Over the last two years, I’ve been building a software company with a consulting arm. Now, a voice in my head is telling me I’m better off running a consulting company with a software arm. Should I listen to it?
You’ll leave this article with:
an understanding of how asking yourself “why” helps you achieve your goals
an argument for why it’s better to be flexible than to adhere to a specific solution
a reminder of why it’s important to analyze the risks of new solutions and ideas
Subscribe below to continue learning from my experiences as a founder through weekly 10-minute reads.
Ask, “Why?”
Any good product manager will tell you that people often devise suboptimal solutions to their own problems. Last week, I wrote about how I’m optimizing for my dream of building a successful technology company. That dream is a solution to a set of my own problems. So, “Why is it my dream?”
In “Should I raise money to start my company?”, I wrote about the outcomes I was looking to accomplish through my startup. I want to be the type of person who:
can support his family, own two homes, and afford to travel regularly. To achieve this goal, I want to earn $2 million over the next 8 years.
is viewed as intelligent, authentic, and driven.
has control over his hours and freedom to work on what he wants.
can build a working software solution for an idea.
I was looking to solve these problems, and the most likely solution was to build a successful technology company.
Address the “why” with better solutions.
I’ve accomplished goal #4.1 I’m left with my finance, reputation, and freedom goals. Building a successful technology company may no longer be the right solution to those problems. If I am more likely to achieve my goals by following another path, why not adapt?
Over the last two years, I’ve been consulting in parallel to developing SolidlyAI. Consulting has been going very well, but I have always viewed it as a way to fund my dream of building a software company. Building a successful consulting company may be the new optimal path to achieving my goals:
Consulting income will be less scalable than software income. But, my average income over the next eight years only needs to be $250,000 per year. That’s an attainable rate to be paid for your time.
My reputation goals aren’t very ambitious. Regardless of what I’m working on, if I continue with this newsletter, I should be able to achieve my reputation goals.
Consulting allows me a lot of freedom. I can work on multiple client projects and focus on finding work that interests me. When there’s less client work available, I can shift my focus to other interesting projects, like SolidlyAI.
Rigidly sticking to the dream of building a successful technology company would prevent me from seeing this new solution.
Adapt: validate new solutions and move forward.
Only pivot when you’re confident a new solution is better than an old one. We typically believe “the grass is always greener on the other side.” If you spend years pivoting in different directions, you’ll eventually realize you haven’t gone far. To protect yourself from this tendency, I strongly suggest you find a way to understand the risks of a new path before you pivot.
In my case, I need to answer the question, “Can I fulfill my financial goals with the consulting business?” So, I need to invest time in marketing and sales. The way to validate your solution may look different; devise a lightweight strategy to prove to yourself that the risks are manageable. I discuss efficiently addressing risks in The #1 Way to 10x Your Company’s Odds of Success.
Continuously ask, address, and adapt to accomplish your underlying goals.
We’re not in complete control of the future. So, why visualize one specific goal and rigidly pursue it? Stay flexible and apply the following three-step framework to understand the “why” behind your goals and adapt your strategies for achieving them:
Ask. Understand the underlying problems/reasons for why you’re pursuing a goal.
Address. Identify other solutions that could help you solve those problems.
Adapt. Validate those new solutions and move forward with whichever solution has the highest likelihood of success.
If I rigidly adhered to the idea that “I want to build a successful software company,” I may miss out on other strategies more likely to address my underlying goals.
Thanks for reading! Questions or ideas for topics? Email me.
I’ve grown my technical skills to the point where I can build a working software solution for any idea. For more information on how I learned the skills I needed, read How to Learn to Build a Software Company.