a single source, nothing corroborates it

Keep one milestone and one obstacle in front of you

Write down the single concrete milestone and the single thing blocking it, look at both every morning, and treat everything else as a chore to dispatch quickly. Name the obstacle that frightens you rather than the comfortable one, because grinding away at the part you are already good at is not persistence. Set the milestone far enough out that it forces investments a short horizon would never justify, and only work on changes that could multiply the number.

The method

1. 01

   Keep one written milestone and one written obstacle in front of you every morning, and treat everything else as a distraction or a chore to dispatch quickly.

2. 02

   Name the obstacle that frightens you rather than the one you are comfortable working on, because the comfortable one is not what is holding growth back.

3. 03

   Set a daily intention against one of three questions: what will bring more of the target market to the site, what will turn more visitors into trials, and what will turn more trials into purchases.

4. 04

   Watch for the trap of grinding away at the part you are good at while the business needs something else, and stop calling it persistence.

5. 05

   Set a distant, specific number as the goal and let it force the investments that a shorter horizon would never justify.

What it returned

• 20

  His milestone examples are concrete growth targets: a public launch, 20 paying customers, trial conversion from 1% to 5%, cancellations from 7% a month down to 4%, $10k MRR.

• 17

  Sample obstacles he lists include getting 17 customers from Product Hunt with no repeatable way to get more, only 15% of first-time users returning, and free users having no reason to upgrade.

• $1,600

  His caricature is the founder posting about $1,600 in monthly revenue after 18 months and framing it as perseverance while avoiding ad tools and sales calls.

• Cohen notes the answer is sometimes code, such as improving the new-user experience to lift trial-to-paid conversion, but usually it sits outside the product entirely.

Sources

• What makes a strategy greatJason Cohen · longform.asmartbear.com · Futuristic · 2023-08-13
• The full story of “the one important thing” for startupsJason Cohen · longform.asmartbear.com · The full story of “the one important thing” for startups · 2011-10-03
• The roadmap to Product/Market Fit (PMF)… maybeJason Cohen · longform.asmartbear.com · 7. Ruthlessly, methodically, systematically prioritize. · 2023-12-24