cut what doesn't matter right now

“Busy” is a funny thing. We’re all busy, but if you’re like me you can stay “busy” doing a bunch of bulls*** nothing.

When my teammates and I started Accoil, we agreed that the first principle we would stick with is this:

We are ruthlessly focused on doing work that matters.

That means that even when we feel like we’re “busy”, we need to stop and take an honest look at the things we’re doing. Does it really matter?

We had one of these conversations this week. Are we building what matters to our customers (and makes them more likely to pay*) or doing things for the fun or the challenge of it?

Is our go-to-market full of work that move the needle or just a bunch of stuff?

Until we’re big enough to afford our own Skunk Works or the equal of Google’s X, we have to spend our time, money, energy on the things that grow our business.

Until then, we cut what doesn’t matter right now. Those things can come back later, but if they’re not high-impact right now, they are not on the roadmap.

What that looks like for product teams — features that don’t fit customer workflows are parked for later.

What that looks like for sales — companies not in our ideal customer profile, no matter how sexy the logo, are put into the ‘keep warm’ column of the CRM.

What that looks like for marketing — channels that don’t convert well enough or bring in the wrong leads are turned off.

It’s hard. But cut the things that don’t matter right now.

Peter

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*Taking payment for our products isn’t the reason we do what we do. But it is a necessary part of what we do. No shame in getting paid what you’re worth, folks.