TLDR: Do the heavy lifting and be as organized with your important work as you wish someone else would be.
First jobs are formative.
Take a competitive athlete, put them into a Fortune 500, give them training and an old school culture, and the output is a hardened sculpture of operating mechanisms.
You see it all the time.
I was speaking with two founders recently, both of whom had raised over $100m at valuations over $1B, and their early jobs provided a very similar experience to mine above.
A banker, on the desk at 4:30a every morning.
A consultant, on the road four days a week.
When it came time to try their hands at zero to one or at fundraising for the first time, the depth of their energy was unmatched because they knew what hard work in the professional context really meant.
Hundreds of no’s before they got their first checks.
Ten to fifteen meetings every single day for years on end.
But what really sets people like this apart is not the inputs alone, but the inputs compounded by their systems.
Big companies are great at teaching systems, ways of operating, and efficient personal time management tools.
Startups, not so much. It’s as if chaos is cool or something.
It’s not.
Most people have close to zero pre & post meeting etiquette.
When it comes to the individuals aiming to drive the outcomes vs. those providing the inputs, here are some basic systems that will ensure progress and compound trust.
If external, use email as the operating system, if internal, use a chat tool
Do the calendar booking when you’re the one asking for the time
If setting a follow-up meeting, summarize the previous meeting alongside a calendar invite
Use one continuous email/Slack thread to track context & progression, especially with people you want to build a brand with, like your own executives
When summarizing use cave speak, bullets, & numbers. Not paragraphs
Send a proposed agenda in the invite and/or 24 hours ahead of time
Discuss the agenda at the onset and ask if there’s anything to add or if anything has changed since last time you spoke
Show up on time… insane that this even has to be on the list
Add travel & buffer time to your calendar so you’re not late
End the meeting at least one minute early, ideally five
Co-create action items at the end of every call, capture them, and follow-through within the hour, but no later than end of day
If there is any heavy lifting to do at all, do it yourself. Go out of your way to make things easier for others. The easier it is for them, the less friction there will be in making progress for you
Say thank you
Frame everything with the intent of mutual success and mutual value
Emotion is weak, business outcomes are strong
Use calendar reminders if you’ve promised something in the distant future. Add both parties with the title “Reminder:…”
Under-promise and overdeliver. For example, use calendar blocks to deliver work you said you would, and promise deadlines you know you can beat
Recognize people who deserve recognition, and make sure the right people see it
Don’t leave anything up to memory, for either party—create shared documents like a sequence of events or project plan with owners and deadlines
Always get next steps
Most people aren’t lucky enough to have these things beaten into them in their first jobs, but some people are, and that may be one reason that their hard work is compounding more effectively than yours.
See you Monday.
PS: My first book, Inevitable, is now available on Amazon.
About Inevitable. Founders nor career professionals have the time to read every book or listen to every podcast on operating with an entrepreneur's mindset. The goal with Inevitable was to create a powerful cliff notes style handbook, distilling advice from around the tech world on building generational companies. At the end of each chapter there is a QR code to a digital repository with the full-length works if you do choose to go deeper on any given topic.