A Startup Needs This Kind Of Compass For Growth
An Example Of Real Time Advice Meets Real World Execution
Every so often, I talk about the lessons I learn from running the startup I’ve created around delivering startup advice. It’s not as crazy as it sounds. It’s actually a little bit crazier, but in a really satisfying way.
This week, as I was putting the finishing touches on answers to entrepreneur questions for Issue #91 of the Teaching Startup Newsletter, I learned a few things about how your mission should ground your growth, and how to actually put that into play.
These are real learnings, but I’m going to be honest, I’m also pretty proud of what Teaching Startup is accomplishing and I want you to try it.
Sometimes the mission is the thing that matters
For context, Teaching Startup takes the most valuable part of startup advisement and makes it affordable and efficient. That most valuable part comes after you strip away the small talk, the formalities, and the self-serving-ness of it (this post notwithstanding), which greatly reduces the expense, but leaves a system that can still compensate smart people for their time and knowledge.
What’s left is entrepreneurs asking real questions that are answered by me and a handful of other seasoned and working entrepreneurs.
Advisement = Answers. Who knew, right?
But the thing is, one of the reasons I even got the idea for Teaching Startup in the first place is that I’ve been frustrated for decades with two problems in entrepreneurship.
- Startup advice is hard to find and it usually sucks.
- I don’t have enough time to help all the entrepreneurs I want to help.
So Teaching Startup really started as me making deeper dives into real entrepreneur problems and giving answers that are the right answers, but maybe not the kinds of sexy answers that will generate a million clicks for an ad-serving publisher.
Here’s the problem. I’ve always been worried that Teaching Startup is mostly me doing the answering. And I still think that’s a problem.
