Why The Small Steps Lead to Ginormous Leaps [How I Learned To Do the Boring Stuff]

We’ve been lied to. Told that if you have the biggest idea in the world and a good enough plan, you’ll make it.

You’ll finally be a millionaire with that big boat, big car and big watch.

Focus on your customer discovery, and make a deck but oh don’t worry about focusing on the product you have right now, if you have one at all.

There is no formula to doing big stuff, there is no perfect timing to fully jump in goggles and all.

To me we were force feed this baloney, to seem like we can do anything we want.

You might hear that from really successful people, or your parents, “if you want it anything is possible.”

100%! But often those same people don’t tell you, “it took 5, 10, 2 years of consistent day in and day out work when nobody was watching, when I was at a WeWork grinding on a Friday.”

Sounds familiar.

Since me and you are a lot alike, we both know that big boy/girl stuff works by doing stuff we don’t want to do, or in this case for those too big of thinkers, to starting with small step might be better than nothing at all.

If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late.

– Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn co-founder

In this one I’m going to share the journey of UPath.ai thus far (yes, we snagged the domain!) so you can see first hand the tiny steps we are making/made and take the bulk of the meat of what I’ve learned from this thing so far.

The Problem With Success

It took me 5 months to gather 500 people in a dataset…

500 people in 5 months! And only for an MVP, crazy!

“Why are we wasting all this time on 500, isn’t our goal 10,000 not 500?”

This way of thinking was in my skull for months at a time and it kind of makes me want to throw up. Guess I thought this way cause 10,000 is a real serious number.

But what I realized is that all that time I spent thinking that 500 was too small, I wasted it by not making progress. Thinking it should be bigger…

That we needed to do better.

Let’s go for that big number cause it sounds prestigious, don’t work hard to finish step 1, go for the grand prize cause it sounds better.

That’s where me and you go wrong. Me and you haven’t been trained to think this way.

We like the idea of doing big stuff but have no idea how to take the incremental steps we need to take to get there. And honestly how are we supposed to think this way.

You can walk down the street and see someone with a nice car and think how can I get that now!

Not how can I get that in 10 years, if that’s really what you want.

The more you read about it, that’s what the people we want to be like have done. Taken small steps towards the big stuff for 10 years, consistently.

If you can’t even achieve 1 goal in a day how are you expected to complete 4?

If you can’t code for 10 minutes a day, how are you expected to code an entire website or app when you have millions in funding.

You cant! You’ll chock in the process, cause you will see past step 1, you’ll care more about the big car, the fantasy land.

That’s been the biggest lesson I’ve learned from the start of all of this. Success sucks, its tiring, long, boring, frustrating, unfriendly and not sexy.

But me and you have a choice, do you want what it brings?

Or do you want to scroll on your phone at 9 PM thinking, “why am I not making strides?”

It’s 1 goal a day, check. Second goal, check. Third, check, each one applying to huge thing you want to do.

^AI MADE THIS THING…

So don’t get it twisted sister!

We’ll never be able to do something big without the small boring steps to get there.

Make A Fortrose With A Brick

So what changed? How have I changed? How can you change?

It took me a while but when you take the really big thing (cool new job, cool startup) and break it down into the smallest step possible.

It becomes a little less scary. A lot more fun!

And if you are trying to do big stuff you and I want to make it as easy as possible to get there.

For example I would go from I need to scrape 100 per day and I will clean later. Bad!

To get the 500 first, check, and then spend an hour per day cleaning! GOOD 🙂

If the goal is to make a 10,000 person dataset then the question becomes how much do you need to scrape per day to get there in 6 months.

BY THE WAY IF YOU ARE BUILDING SOMETHING THAT REQUIRES A LOT OF DATA AND YOU DON’T KNOW HOW TO GET IT.

CHECK OUT PHANTOMBUSTER!

And in terms of how this could apply to you, well here are some use cases:

Finding a new job – Apply to 5 jobs per day that match what you are looking for
Meeting 10 new really smart people – Go to 1 new event every week, talk to 1 new person everyday

Look at how you can max out today to get to that end goal. Sounds generic, I know, but this concept of, “maxing out”, is super dope in my opinion.

Strategy & Skills The Perfect Punch

Having the skills to code, market, design, or collect data is like having a utility belt full of gadgets.

I don’t full understand data analysis but I’m learning. I’m not an expert in marketing or design but am getting a lot better.

And to prove my skills in data so far check out this Tableau dashboard I built:

With the right skills in your arsenal, you become a superhero. Batman, Superwoman, Jerry anyone of them or all of them combined why not!

Here are some more links I like:

And Here is A Picture of Hamster!

Again AI made this…

Okay, Wrap it Up!

So in the end sure you hear it all the time, take one big thing and break it down.

But in this case take the biggest thing you can possible think about and create the first goal.

Cross that off then go to the next cause I think in this case I showed you what happens if you don’t.

You waste a lot of time.

Every monumental business, every game-changing startup, every audacious goal was once just a collection of tiny actions, repeated diligently.

So, what’s your version of the “data dance”?

If you made it this far thank you! And if you liked this one..

Thank you!

-MT