Savage Mindset: Secrets to Moving Fast

Welcome to my newsletter. Every month, I’m going to be sharing highlights of leadership lessons, new tech, and things that have inspired me recently.

This month, I’m sharing secrets to moving as quickly as possible, potential pitfalls, and how to stay on track when you achieve speed.

Prepare for Speed by Preparing for Success

"Make sure you prepare for success.”

That was the first thing my dad told me when Brendan Schwartz and I had just started Wistia and had proudly proclaimed our goal was to make $60,000/year, guaranteeing each of us a $30,000/year salary.

It was also the best advice I’ve ever received.

Entrepreneurs like to move quickly, but we’re also human. Humans often think about what will happen if they fail. We’re not trained to plan ahead if things take off and they succeed. 

But to move successfully at speed means you’re ready to face the hard things that come up along your journey — HR issues, feeling financially responsible for all employees, deciding on company strategies that will impact everyone, and handling customer issues. 

No matter what you face, the most crucial step in moving quickly in business is preparing for success tomorrow by making good decisions today. 

If you don’t, you’re haphazardly barreling into the first turn of a long road trip. You’ll never know how far you can go if your wheels fall off before you even reach peak speed.

Find Synergies to Compound Speed

We’ve been working hard here at Wistia to produce features at speed, and we’re learning it’s not as simple as putting your foot on the gas and accelerating.

When you accelerate, you need to stay hungry and be on the lookout for opportunities to compound speed by finding synergies.

A great example is an idea we had to supercharge our new interactive transcripts. We decided to add a feature that allows you to select a part of the transcript and immediately open that clip into our editor, making it easier than ever to pull clips from a longer video. 

The idea took just 48 hours to come to life.

There’s an art to moving quickly. It’s like racing. Taking the opportunity to draft the idea in front of you can help you compound speed.

Give Your Team Confidence to Go

Something everyone needs to move more quickly? Confidence that they are moving in the right direction.

Here are five ways to give people that confidence so you get up to speed faster:

1. Have a clear strategy that people can understand. 
2. Clearly communicate that strategy so everyone is on the same page. This includes repeating the strategy at key team meetings, even if it seems boring or repetitive. 
3. Get more customer-centric than you already are. Encourage teams to ship customer-facing things quickly, get feedback, and move forward with the confidence you have the information you need to improve. 
4. Make sure teams know they have the freedom to fail. 
5. Take a cue from Mark Moses, CEO Coaching International . Be laser-focused on the big outcome you want and focus on the right inputs to get there.

Don’t Be Afraid to Hit a Brick Wall

Understanding that there will be blockers along your journey is key to keeping up your momentum.

Miro 's Chief Product Officer Varun Parmar appears on an episode of Lenny’s Podcast to discuss just this. Parmar believes that those that stay a step ahead in the market are those that “hit the brick wall first.”

When you hit a wall, you learn faster, and you can adjust your path more quickly. 

The very best product marketers are able to move quickly, not because they’re the best at moving quickly, but because they’re best at spotting patterns in previous blockers and setting the team up for success from the beginning.

They understand things like: 

• Who should be on a given team, and who should not
• How to define a scope
• Determining what success should look like

The lesson? 

Don’t fear the brick wall. Get better at accepting it’s there and working around it. You’ll only get faster.