Coaching session, part 2: Fred and Eric

- I don't know what is preventing him from allocating the time to it. - Let's find out. Let's find out. Let me play your partner. I'll be Daniel. You just talk to me about this. - One thing that hit me was, when I was talking to Fred, this whole idea of maybe allocating 50 hours in doing a project and testing assumptions. Feels like after all this, Daniel, I've spent maybe 10 hours on this over the last year, and you've probably spent maybe five hours on this. I'd love to commit together for us to spend 50 hours together before the end of the year. And take some actions on this marketing plan. This will include trying to figure out how to do an outbound email to a targeted list of people. It will mean posting and distributing a couple of these articles. I know you've got some articles that are just sitting on your computer right now that we haven't done anything with. Let's take some actions, and then let's evaluate. I think that's a good idea for us to do, and I'd love for us to get together. - Yeah. Sounds great. Sounds like a really good idea. - Awesome. - Great. Okay, let's pause. I doubt that anything would happen after this conversation. It's in the realm of good ideas. - Yeah. - And that's why I said, sounds like a good idea. - Right. Right. - So, there's something about the high level of obstruction that makes it very easy to look like we're on the same page. - [Eric] Yeah. But it doesn't bid very well for the execution because it's not clear. I'm not clear what I'm supposed to do. - Yep. - You're like, well, I talked to Fred. 50 hours, I do this, you do that, but it's blurry, it's abstract. I don't feel committed. I feel like I just said, yeah, it's a great idea and it's free. Because it's a great idea, then I don't have to devote any resources. - Right. Right. - So, it's easy to agree with that, but that agreement, it could happen, but there's low probability it would translate into action. - Yep. - So, let's do it different. Now, I'll be you. - [Eric] Alright. - And you be Daniel. And again, play Daniel like, yeah, I'm open, it's a good idea, but I'm going to be a lot sharper in making the proposal. So Daniel, I've been thinking about our firm and the future. - [Eric] Yeah. I have a concern that we're doing so well day-to-day and we are so busy and occupied with the level of work that we're not investing much in the future. And I'd like to invest in the future, more as a desire, and I think it would be a good idea to test it. How do you feel about that? Do you agree that it might be worth exploring? Going to the next level or bidding a platform at a higher level? - Yeah, definitely. I apologize, it's been really busy lately, so I know I've been meaning to do- - No complaints. I'm not complaining because I haven't done anything either. But I think the reason I haven't done it and you haven't done it is not because we're busy, but because we haven't really committed to doing anything. I know I haven't committed, and I haven't heard you committing. So, I have a proposal and I have a request is that for the next five weeks, we don't work on Fridays on external clients. We don't take, we say no. If anybody says, can you do this on Friday? We say no. Or if we want to do it on Friday, we commit to work on Saturdays, but I can't do that, so it has to be a weekday. My family, I don't want to work on weekends. So, we don't take clients on Friday. And we meet at eight and we spend 10 hours. I don't know what we're going to do in those 10 hours. For five weeks, five Fridays, 50 hours, and the first three hours, we put together a plan what we would do with the other 47. So, I don't want to go into the details now, but the project would be, we're going to test this idea for five weeks on 50 hours. And we'll give it that time and that energy as a serious commitment to test. After that, we might want to continue, we might say, nah, it's not worth it. But, then we'll stop dreaming and screwing around with an idea that we're never going to implement. - Yeah. - [Fred] How do you feel about that? Are you willing to do that? - Maybe. I might be. I might be. Well, it's kind of scary because I'm not a good planner. I like to kind of just react to things, but you're right in that if we're going to get things done, then we have to actually put the time aside to do it like we do with everything else, right? - So, might be means no? You either say, yes, I promise or no, I'm not willing to do it. Or you could say, I need to think about it until tomorrow. - Yeah. - But then tomorrow you'll tell me, yes, I promise or no, we won't do it, or I don't commit. - We're really busy right now, Eric, we have a couple huge deals coming in right now, and our Q1 could be our best quarter ever. This is awesome. I think we should, let's do it. I just think right now, it's a little bit too crazy when you put me on the spot like that. Let's do it. Let's do it after things are not so crazy, maybe in mid-February honestly. It's going to be crazy until then. - Okay, so are you proposing we commit to doing it mid-February, like the third Friday of February, we start for five Fridays? But we put it in the calendar and we promise to ourselves we're going to do this. Now, I'm going to talk to a board member, there's this professor in Stanford that's acting as a coach for me. I will make a promise to her that we will do that if you agree. Because we need someone external that will hold us accountable. - [Eric] Yeah. - Are you willing to commit to that third Friday of February? - Yeah, and I think if we put it on the calendar now, then we can protect that time for when other things come versus right now where things are still a bit too crazy. - Yeah, that's reasonable. I don't want to force it. But I don't want to just keep it blurry. So, I'd like to have a clear agreement, and if we have to change it, we change it. Even in February. We'll do it explicitly. Then, we have to look in the mirror and say, we're not so committed to this. - Yeah. Yeah. I tend to cancel things at the last minute like this. - Well, if we commit to this, it would be hard to cancel. I'm taking it seriously. I will feel mightily disappointed and I will start believing that we don't have a future. Our future is just going to be the same as the present. - [Eric] Yep. - And if you don't want to create a bigger future, that's okay, but then we need to talk about that. - Yeah. Yeah. - I don't want to fool ourselves. I don't want to pretend that we're going to do one thing when in the back of our minds, we're not going to do it. So, if you commit to it, it's serious if we break that commitment. - [Eric] Yeah. - Are you willing to do that? - Yeah. Yeah.