Trade Up: A Founder's Guide to Trading Up from Low- to High-Value Work
With this simple analysis, I saved five hours per week from low-value work. Now, I can spend the time on more valuable activities.
Welcome to A Founder’s Life for Me! I’m Alek, and I provide practical recommendations on how to build your company (or career) based on my experiences building tech companies.
What you’ll gain from reading this
Last week, instead of asking, “How can I spend more time on business development?” I started to ask, “How can I be more efficient with my business development?” You’ll leave this article with:
examples of how I’ve wasted time to help you avoid making similar mistakes
ideas for how to audit how you spend your time and increase your efficiency
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Focus on what’s limiting you now, not aspirational limitations.
In my experience, in the early stages of company-building, the highest-impact problems to focus on are:
Currently and directly limiting your customers or funnel. For SolidlyAI at this stage, this includes:
Solving feedback and pain points I’ve received from customers.
Imminently threatening the existence of your company. For SolidlyAI at this stage, this includes:
Revenue dropping below a threshold where I can continue to work on it.
Revenue growing too slowly to justify my continued investment.
I need to maximize the time I spend solving these problems.
Measure where you spend your time.
Through my time management app, LevelUP, I’ve better understood how I spend my time. Previously, I assumed I still had the opportunity to shift more of my time toward solving these problems. With LevelUP, I learned I had very little additional time to give. This insight begged the question, “How can I be more efficient with my time?”
If you want to try the LevelUP app, please email me at newsletter@alekhagopian.com. I plan to start sharing it with others in April 2024.
Measure and analyze your output.
Two imminent threats to SolidlyAI are revenue-related (mentioned above) and solved through sales and business development. Through LevelUP, I learned that I was already spending the majority of my time on sales. However, I’d made little progress in addressing the two imminent threats, so I analyzed my past sales outreach to understand why. Here’s what I found.
I learned that:
40% of my sales outreach went to the target customer for my consulting and software products.
The engagement and interest rates were higher than I thought, too.
60% was general networking, looking for people who might introduce me to my target customers.
I’ve gained ten introductions from these conversations, which then flow through the consulting and software outreach funnels.
In summary, I’d been spending 40% of my “sales outreach” time (3ish hours per week) on a high-production activity and 60% (5ish hours per week) on a low-production activity. This is a solvable problem!
All “sales outreach” felt productive at the time, but most of it was not high-value. I know (or can easily find) many more people who fit my target customer profile. So, instead of sinking time into networking, I’m shifting more time into directly engaging with my target customers.
Everyone has a least valuable activity.
For your company to survive, you need to consistently solve the problems threatening its existence. I understand this in theory, but I recently discovered I was wasting five hours per week on low-value work…. five hours every week that I could claim back and reinvest in the imminently threatening problems.
Everyone has a “lowest value activity.” What is yours? How can you shift your time from low-value work to high-value work?
Recommendation:
Measure where you spend your time and how that time investment pays off. Identify low-value investments and trade up to high-value ones.
What systems do you use to focus your time on high-value work? If you'd like to discuss, please email me at newsletter@alekhagopian.com.