Maybe it was $10k a month. Maybe $50k. Maybe you’re still chasing it. But let’s say you got there — the spreadsheet confirms it, the bank account confirms it. You did it.

And then: nothing. A weird flatness. Maybe a day of satisfaction, then immediately a new number appears in your head. $200k. $500k. A million.

You moved the goalpost before you even celebrated.

This is not a motivation problem. It’s a design problem. And almost every founder I know has it.

Here’s what’s actually happening.

Money is a unit of measurement. It measures nothing on its own — the same way “kilometers” doesn’t tell you whether you’re going somewhere you want to go. When you set “$100k/month” as a goal, you’ve essentially said: I want to travel 100 kilometers. In no particular direction. For no particular reason.

Your brain doesn’t know what to do with that. So it does what brains do with unfinished tasks — it keeps the loop open. Hit $100k? The loop says: not done. Try $200k.

The goalpost moves because you never told yourself what the goalpost was for.

I spent a long time running this way.

Numbers on a spreadsheet. Revenue targets. Portfolio goals. All legitimate. All completely disconnected from anything I could actually feel.

What eventually broke the loop wasn’t motivation or discipline. It was getting brutally specific about what I actually wanted money to do.

Not “financial freedom.” Not “security.” Those are words, not experiences.

This: if I want to fly somewhere tomorrow, I book it without checking my balance. Massage five times a week — not a luxury, a line item. If I want to hire someone brilliant, I do it without a three-week spreadsheet analysis about whether I can afford it.

Most financial goals are socially constructed. You picked your number because it sounds impressive, or because someone you follow mentioned it, or because it’s round and aspirational and feels like “enough.” It’s not your number. You’ve never checked.

And here’s the worse part — money goals with no concrete image behind them don’t just fail to motivate you. They actively mislead you. They make you optimize for the wrong things. Burn out chasing a metric that, even when achieved, will give you no signal that you’ve arrived.

Because you haven’t defined arrival.

What actually works is ugly and specific and kind of embarrassing to write down.

Not “I want financial freedom.” But: I want to stop doing discovery calls with clients who aren’t the right fit because I need the invoice. I want to take August off without calculating whether I can. I want to hire an assistant without a guilt spiral.

Those are real. Those have weight. Your nervous system knows what they mean.

So. What do you actually want the money for?

Not the aspirational version. The embarrassingly specific version. The one that includes the weekly massage and the spontaneous flight and the thing you’ve been telling yourself you’ll do “when you can afford it.”

Write it down. Price it out.

Chances are, the number is smaller than you think. And the path there is clearer once you’re running toward something real instead of toward a larger version of the same abstraction.

They say the same thing over and over. And it doesn’t stick. They said it on Monday — by Thursday everyone forgot.

And here is the part that makes it so much worse: the repetition itself is killing your team. When people expect to be reminded, they stop taking ownership. They just wait. For the next reminder. For the next all-hands. For the next Telegram message.

You don’t even realize how much money this is costing your business.

McKinsey found that 70% of all change initiatives fail — and this isn’t abstract. It shows up as lost competitive positions, a team that quietly stops believing in leadership, and cost savings that never happen. Only 26% of employees actually implement changes effectively. And willingness to support organizational changes dropped from 74% in 2016 to 38% today. Partly because people have already watched too many “changes” get announced and then quietly disappear.

I spent 11 years figuring out why this happens.

The answer is surprisingly simple: behind every implementation should be 30 steps. Thirty. Not one announcement. Not one message in the chat. Not one rule added to the handbook.

Without that infrastructure, your words stay exactly where you said them — in the Google Meet window, in the office meeting, in the Telegram chat. Nowhere else.

What does this actually cost you?

Here’s a rough calculation for a mid-size team:

Total: ~$480,000/year. Do the math for your team size.

So what actually works?

Build a system where what you say today gets embedded in all company processes — and doesn’t stay only in the Google Meet, the office conversation, or the Telegram chat.

That’s what I spent 11 years building. A methodology that finally made it clear which 30 steps are needed for a change to actually stick in the company.

So you can stop leaking profit on things you’ve already said five times.

If you’re a founder or operations manager dealing with exactly this — I’d love to hear which part resonates. Reply here or find me on LinkedIn.

Back in May, I naively thought all I had to do was record a video, and voilà—that’s a course. But I couldn’t have been more wrong.

In this course, I am sharing everything I’ve learned since university—over nine years of continuous work in self-management.

Picture this: I’m sitting in my favorite T-shirts, drinking filter coffee, recording myself on two iPhones with a professional microphone every Saturday and sometimes Fridays and Sundays throughout the whole summer!

In the videos, I share my personal screen to show what works for me and the things I tested before finding what actually worked.

I tell funny jokes—well, not always funny, to be honest—because the rainy weather in London sometimes makes me a bit melancholic. I pet my cat, share personal stories from work and life, and uncover both my failures and successes. What you see is the real me. Sometimes, it took me five takes just to switch off "Teacher Jane" and let "Jane Jane" come through.

The recordings took so long that I changed cities a few times, brought my camera everywhere, experienced ups and downs, washed my favorite T-shirts multiple times just to wear them again, and drank liters of coffee. The weather changed at least 100 times, and I gave up just as many times before cheering myself up again.

During this process, I received dozens of messages from strangers asking about the course’s start date—even when I was just beginning the recording phase.

My instagram

My Linkedin

The course was supposed to take three months, but the whole process ended up taking me four months to record and another three months to prepare. And let me tell you—it’s been a JOURNEY!

At least now, I’ve learned so much about video editing, content creation, course methodology, chatbots, YouTube specifics, marketing (beyond just courses), and the overall course production industry.

So far, I’ve already received 34 amazing feedback messages from the course launch, and I’ve achieved 1/20th of my planned income goal.

One of my friends recently said, “Your desire to give is stronger than your desire to get.” So, no matter what the results look like on January 20, when the course officially launches after the presales, I’m calling this seven-month period my bachelor’s degree in course production.

Regardless of the outcome, I’m giving myself a solid PASSED.

If you want to join this journey of yours together with me, check out the website which is fucking the best one in the whole world → here

If you are a fan of structuring things and want to make your life more clear and manageable - join me on this journey here.

If you you are a founder and want to get a discount for your team - DM me.

If you know where I should post this course - let me know - @Janedvd (Telegram and Instagram)

A year ago, when I quit my full-time job, I thought I would be working as a solopreneur forever. I was tired of all the team-related dynamics. It took me one year to recover from being antisocial😅 and start building a team again. During the interviews, I emphasized that I wouldn't foster a "family startup" spirit in the agency - we would focus on work rather than meetings and team building events. I made it clear that I wouldn't be the one entertaining everyone. I could offer a huge range of world-scale challenges, but that was it.

Some candidates declined because they needed that strong sense of team belonging, while others were fascinated by this opportunity as they wanted more focused and strategic work. It showed me again how many of us are tired of losing focus. I have just successfully hired two part-time operations managers for my team, and on Tuesday, we are starting our work at our innovative data-driven operations agency, OpsLab. :)

I've started preparing the internal onboarding document (it's in Ukrainian).

Subscribe now

It took me 9 years to figure this out about my schedule

1. I can't have calls on Mondays. For me, it's a day to concentrate on client tasks. It's important for me to block 3-4 hour windows for several clients and work with focus. On this day, I usually write to clients about our plans for the week, what I expect from them, and what they can expect from me. This tremendously reduces stress throughout the week.

2. In reality, I can't have calls before 10:00, ideally before 11:00. This is time for doing things that energize me for the day. From 9:00 to 10-11:00, I read newsletters, look at new apps, write posts, and explore new things.

3. Between 7:00 - 9:00, it's super important for me not to engage in work. Since I have notifications turned off, this is quite easy. I don't always wake up at 7:00, but during this time I'm a fan of reading a book, having breakfast, cuddling the cat, and replying to friends.

4. I try to schedule meetings on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays. Wednesday is usually for working on my marketing and development strategy.

5. I plan my work week 1-2 weeks in advance.

Interested? Read the whole version here in Linkedin

Subscribe now

Are you a workaholic?

I was listening to the Village podcast and figured out that there is a test to check of you are a workaholic :) Check this out about yourself here.

Tools which made my month?

1. Napkin.ai - simply write text and get a text organised on a picture.

2. Julius.ai - write a text and get a diagram.

The person who showed me the path of serial entrepreneurship

@artemborodatiuk and his lecture at LOB (also in Ukrainian)

Subscribe now

2 gifts for my eyes this fall

If you want to read about more updates this fall in Google, check it out here

Notion also shared some updates this October

Automations can now send emails, Custom emojis!, new Marketplace and more here.

Enneagram of Personality

is a pseudoscientific model of the human psyche which is principally understood and taught as a typology of nine interconnected personality types.

Subscribe now

Last but not least, Introducing the analysis tool in Claude.ai

Now Claude.ai allows to analyse date and build dashboards.

Do you know that the more people know, the more they overthink certain topics?

There is a lower likelihood that a person with a great scope of knowledge will start something as fast as a person with less knowledge. There are a million side factors, like the number of mistakes which a person with low knowledge level will make, how great the success for this person can be, etc. But I am sharing just my experience, where I have been launching an education course on self-management for 3 months already, because I have been talking to too many people, getting recommendations from too many advisors, thinking, rethinking, and finally getting back again to the initial idea. Simultaneously, other people just launch it, test it, change it, and start doing it again. Without making it perfect. The more you know, the higher the likelihood that you want to make it perfect. So to avoid chasing perfection, I depicted this idea for myself with Claude.ai and Julius.ai.

Subscribe now

Consistency, proactivity and stubbornness may be the only 3 things which matter at the end.

Books Worth Reading (Not Typical Business Literature)

“Anatomy of a Warrior” (available in Ukrainian only) by Andriy Zelinskyi. Great philosophy of a Ukrainian warrior. Morals, strategy, team, and spirit as a core for every leader. It reminds me of all those Greek and Roman philosophers. Ukraine now has its own warrior philosophy.

Share Opslab by Jane

Tools I Tested and Started Using

For this particular newsletter I wanted to test out an AI tool which gives you a chance to build a diagram based on the description. And I found Julius.ai. They create a code based on R or Python and provide you with different diagrams. Its also good if you have a lot of data for analysis.

Another news of the day is that Darka launched Spry Plan today! It’s free, give it a try! Spry is your personal Meeting Cost Calculator, designed to bring clarity to your schedule by integrating seamlessly with your calendar. Spry provides visualisations of meeting costs and participants' wages directly within your calendar, helping you schedule meetings with purpose and efficiency.

One more tool for data analysis made my Ukrainians is “Datrics AI Analyst Builder”. AI Analyst Builder enables teams to create custom AI analysts without coding. These analysts answer data questions via a chat interface like ChatGPT.

Subscribe now

Biggest Eye Opener This Week

The greatest memories are built when you step out of your comfort zone. Do you remember the last time it was rainy, but you still went out to meet your friends for cocktails? Or when you were tired at work but still traveled abroad for your sister's wedding? Or when you had an idea besides your main job and decided to implement it? All these actions required willpower, and you might not have wanted to do them at that particular moment. But in the end, these moments give meaning to our lives. It's those times when we say, "I am tired, I would rather stay at home… but I will go," that inspire us and give us energy. Life is made up of happy moments that lie beyond the easy path.

Health Insights as I'm Kinda Into Biohacking :)

Recently I joined a course on “Biology and Systems Thinking for CEOs and Owners” where Petro Chornomorets is a lector. He is a candidate of biological sciences, expert in mental health, education and systems thinking, teacher of the Kyiv-Mohyla Business School.

Even though my first lecture will be in 2 weeks, I have started watching videos on Youtube with Petro.

There is a great idea that our willpower is limited and if we use it in the early morning, forcing ourselves to finish a dish we dont want or participate in the meeting we dont want to attend we heartlessly use our willpower, which could have been used for other things.

Recently, scientists discovered the idea the more we build our willpower, the longer we will live. So they believe that there is the direct correlation between this and longevity.

Petro is joking on why would someone want to live long if they have to force themselves each day to do something to develop willpower :)

Subscribe now

What have I started doing to leave this "passive" zone?

🧜 Dramatically decrease the number of meetings. Regardless of the topic - formal or informal, personal or work-related. Cut them off. Keep only the most important ones.

🙅‍♀️ Check how you perceive your projects if you work with clients. Are all of them new and stressful? Or do you have 4 difficult projects? A level of novelty higher than 40% is perceived as stress for your brain. New people, their reactions, language, emotions, connections, new solutions, commitment, and required responsibility. Each of these factors is resource-consuming if it's above the norm for your brain's perception.

🧑‍🎤 Download computer games. Recall what you played in your childhood - Need For Speed, GTA, The Sims? Go for it! Spend a few hours or days playing those games. Add them to your routine. Your brain will be turned off during this process. It's priceless.

🪭 Just be a couch potato. Lie down for a day, week, month... however long you need to recover.

If you want to feel happiness, joy, or other positive vibes, your brain needs to have the capacity to digest it. Before emotional burnout, your brain spends all its resources on digesting stress and novelty.

Books Worth Reading (Not Typical Business Literature)

"Can I have an onion" by Oksana Lemishka. The book is only in Ukrainian so far. It's a non-fiction collection of short stories about how happy societies are built in Ukraine and abroad. I can't stop reading it. For emotional burnout, the book is perfect.

Tools I Tested and Started Using

Remember I shared some tools for process description? Here's a new tool called Guidde. It helps you create instructions, SOPs, and demo recordings.

Have you heard that Figma has a new Beta? It's called Figma Slides.

I've been using Craft for ages. But a friend of mine wrote a post about this on LinkedIn and even created a template for Startup Weekly Meetings. Feel free to download it.

Biggest Eye Opener This Week

Team is the key. Read a book which was translated into Ukrainian for the first time - "Who: The A Method of Hiring"

Health Insights as I'm Kinda Into Biohacking :)

Whoop perceives my laugh as stress, which is kinda cringe. Right now I'm only checking my sleep quality there, and that's it. There were no big insights, unfortunately.

Meanwhile, I found a Ukrainian company that specializes in innovative preventive medicine. They have a subscription model with 3 different packages. I'm considering the second one now, but want to collect any feedback, as their positioning is not strong, despite the qualifications of their founder.

Here is their Telegram Chat → @dr_shagov

Here is the book of the founder → https://t.me/dr_shagov/1723

Subscribe now

If you've made it this far and you have an agency, this info should be an eye-opener for you.

Where should you start from when building an operations system for an agency?

🧣 Start using Notion for Company Links. Build databases for all directions there. It will be much easier to structure info later on.

🫂 Work with ClickUp or free Clockify to track your team members' time. Why? You will be able to plan with Gantt charts and do capacity management and resource allocation.

🙋‍♀️ Do budgeting for projects, so you can do plan-actual analysis. KNOW YOUR MARGIN. You may want to listen to a podcast organized by Arthur Fedorénko and Den Rudenko "Increasing business margins: gaps (problems), solutions, outcomes".

👮 Set up basic company goals for a year. Prepare KPIs/OKRs for team members. Nothing sophisticated.

👨‍🌾 Track your progress weekly, monthly, and quarterly. Reports and statuses are good for that.

🤑 Do financial planning. So you know how many people you need at every stage of your development. Let's say I know that if I have 10 projects, I need 2 operations managers. How do I know? Because I can see in Clockify that on average, the capacity of operations is 5 projects monthly. Oh, and magically, you will know your money plan :)

☺️ Draw a simple org structure. Why? Because you'll know who you need to hire by looking back and forth there.

🤓 Do retrospectives, because analysis is the key for any business.

Back in my childhood, I could have been reading books that started like this substack.

Operations Done Left and Right

It appears that founders have more issues with regular management than with all other aspects of business. Obviously, the latter is a consequence of the former. So, I've decided to include a regular section in my substack that provides useful information in this area.

Meetings Hygiene (you can copy and paste this into your company rules for everyone to be aware of these values):

1. You should know the cost of your regular meetings. How much do you invest in a weekly executive meeting?

2. You should know the purpose of each regular meeting in advance. No purpose - no meeting.

3. You should have an agenda for the meeting. Not a rough plan, but a clear agenda detailing how much time you will spend on each topic.

4. You should be strong enough (mentally strong 🙂) to stop a discussion if it deviates from the agenda or exceeds the planned time.

5. You should analyse whether you need those meetings and timely cancel meetings if there is no agenda. Don't be afraid to do so. Canceling a purposeless meeting can sometimes save your company thousands.

6. You should record all action points right after the meeting and ensure everyone adds them to their personal task lists.

7. You should have a moderator who keeps everyone on track and asks clear questions. Every meeting is a small strategic session that requires a moderator.

At the end of the day, meetings can be the most powerful instrument for managing people and simultaneously the biggest time eater. So, choose what yours will be.

Subscribe now

Books Worth Reading (Not Typical Business Literature)

"Africa Is Not a Country"

How Otto Von Bismarck divided Africa with 15 European countries at the Berlin Conference. How territories were sold to British private companies and then sold back to the British Government. Why Unilever was there. How 15 European nations decided the fate of the whole continent, dividing territories without regard to the languages, cultures, and tribes. The African Scramble.

Tools I Tested and Started Using

Humata → you can ask it some questions from huge PDFs and it will find the answer or can do analysis of the data.

WaxWing → marketing strategies for SEO, SMM, your website. Just share your website and based on the data on it, the tool will generate some marketing strategies with time estimation, priority.

Folk → CRM which allows you to have fundrasing, sales, networking, recruitment pipelines in one place. It enriches data from socials. Save a contact without jumping between tools — import from anywhere on the web with folkX

Biggest Eye Opener This Week

Template for Agencies in ClickUp → https://clickup.com/templates/agency-management-t-90100000747

For those interested in Project Management

What is the MoSCoW Prioritization Method? → Article here.

How to Use T-Shirt Sizing as an Agile Estimation Technique → Article here.

Health Insights as I Am Kinda Into Biohacking :)

Whoop is good for sleep tracking and considers various factors that affect your recovery. However, one of these factors, stress, is influenced by heart rate. And... every time I laugh or joke a lot, my stress level is high. This means that Whoop cannot differentiate between good and bad stress, which has changed my attitude toward stress levels as not crucial.

From interesting observations... after I had McDonald's at 10:30 pm, I experienced a high level of stress the whole night. This was the first time since I started using Whoop a month ago. Everyone tells you that eating late is bad for you, but no one shows you a diagram illustrating how your body digests food all night, decreasing your sleep quality. What a shame.

Your Jane Davydiuk, Fractional COO

Subscribe now

And I came up with the idea while doing my fav hobbies.

Quite surprising, isn’t it?

Yesterday my best friend posted a video while boxing and wrote: “I though about work for a second and received a punch into my face”, and that appeared to be the best word explanation I can give myself why founders need operations in place.

Every time I play big tennis, I simply forget about everything and the only thing I am capable of is to hit the ball. And only focusing on the ball and nothing else let me play a uninterrupted game for a few minutes. Focus in place.

Every time I am writing a social media post, I need to turn off all the notifications and dig deeper into my thoughts, otherwise I would be writing it for hours. Text receives all the likes and reposts only if I give all my energy to it.

Every time I am running with the ball at the basketball, I simply can not do anything but focus on running and the ball. Thoughts there simply don’t have place.

I can continue forever. Focus is the only things that matters nowadays.

“The Power of Now” of Eckhart Tolle if one of my fav books in this topic.

So the answer with my clients has been on the surface all this time. They are hungry for the ability to focus. They need someone who can help them set up the processes so they can finally produce good results either in sales on marketing.

you happen to have perfect days. everyone has. but it depends on your perception how you treat those days. which angle of the situation you see and how you rely on such days when it is tough.

last week I had a day when everything seemed to be going amazing. and there is no BUT, it was truly great. and what I learned when being a founder is that you can live long and move fast only if you focus on days like this one. because during your month you can have hardships, tough projects and it is so important to have this strand in your head via which you can boost your strength and level up your spirit.

this post is about steps and fluctuations in everyday life. it is about the marathon, even though I am good only in sprints.

So my instruction for you would be easy:

1. Screenshot those moments when you feel happy.

2. Add them to the separate folder in your phone.

3. Look through those moment monthly.

4. Send some messages of gratefulness to those who wrote it to you.

5. When you like someones idea or you are inspired by someone - share this vibe.

People like your emotions, your energy, your vibe, your genuineness, not your product or service. Trust me. The only thing you want is the sense of belonging.

Seems Matt knows all about this.

Thank you all the people who wrote me last week, you make me move faster!

The passion to acting appeared this summer when I was reading “Year of Yes” of Shonda Rhimes. She is a producer of Si and Nancy, Inventing Anna, Scandal etc. She described this whole industry in such a charming and challenging manner simultaneously that I couldn’t dance into it. If you know me, you know how much addiction I do have to everything new and hard. However, she was not the only source of inspiration as the end of August was time when we finished watching Killing Eve with Jodie Comer and Sandra Oh.

Let's get real, I cant manage to be in Hollywood tomorrow, the day after tomorrow or even in a month. But I can dream of it. Dreams usually save me during the hardest times. So why not to put my creative bonds into some sort of an adventurous acting journey?

So I have started applying for castings, have some of them being booked in other cities, but I am still not sure how it works, so no guarantee I am gonna enjoy the process.

On Sat Paul, the founder of BAFTA courses I go to, asked us a questions - what is your intention? One girl immediately answered that “Success”. She meant success in terms of becoming the best actress on the national level. And then Paul did’t continue with other definitions, but stuck to this one and gave us the homework “To define what is your intention? What success if for you?”.

At first I was scared as I did’t have that definition of intention. I had barely any thoughts related to success. Of course I want everyone to know me :) but thats just a child’s impulse. After a short thought once we started looking at a blue screen and creating emptiness inside us, which was our next task, I had nothing in my head accept the idea that I want to be driven. I have no huge plans, as everything looks possible to fulfil. I know that during my life I will change dozens of professions even more hobbies. But the only thing I have tremor about is absence of passion. So for me no matter what the result would be, if I am driven during the process, it is worth it.

that’s the golden idea of materialistic thoughts theory. once you are grateful, you will get even more. once you are in a good mood, you will end up the day even in a better mood.

Subscribe now

if you have a black line and you perceive the world from that perspective, you will have it until the moment you fall suddenly at the white one. the way on the black one can last for months/years in this case.

i remember once i had been studying for 14 hours in the WU library, logically I was almost dead at 10 pm, but I needed 2-3 more hours to finish the project. so I just went out to the loo, looked in my tired eyes and smiled, for a second I believed i am full of strength. and i was empowered indeed. why would I tell you about such spiritual things?

because it happened to me, it worked out back than.

okay, if that is so hard for you, simply start adding positive phycology to your thoughts. what are you worried right now? make a switch - find at least 3 things which are good about this situation.

Subscribe now

believe me, even if you do not feel satisfied now, but you start imaging you are, your brain will believe you and will start building new thoughts from that perspective.

don’t be among those people whose 70% of thoughts are circling around bad things.

However, when I strapped on the snowboard this time, I couldn't recall how to move. I felt frozen and had to spend the whole day recalling all the techniques, or better to say, learning everything again.

Subscribe now

The biggest insight came at the end of the first day of snowboarding. I already understood the logic of how to do it, but the next step was more about my heart than my mind. Why? I had to trust myself to turn around the edge of the snowboard, being on a 45-degree slope. I had to believe I could do it. Could I do it now? The evolution was only possible if I did.

Nothing mattered at that moment—whether I knew all the hacks in my head or had someone around—nothing. The only thing that could have helped me was my faith in myself.

It's interesting how all things in life are similar. I wouldn't have started my business without this faith. It's kind of funny that I didn't know I trusted myself that much. But on the slope, each time I turned around and around, risking, falling down, and then choosing another slope to try out, I understood that I had to turn around approximately 70 times on ONE SLOPE. ONE. I trusted myself hundreds of times during the day because I had faith that I could handle that turn around.

The hardest thing is to trust yourself again when you fall down and have more serious injuries than a simple hematoma. After this, it's harder to trust again, and you feel it. The question is: will you give this fall a chance for doubts?

so the idea is quite simple - the faster I run, the less life I feel. the less pleasure I have and less meaning I can find in my life.

before running was my life style - I was always somewhere - with joking with friends, sharing news with relatives, meeting new acquaintances, finding purpose in work, visiting galleries, preparing for a trip. and it was amazing time.

and I have no clue how much thoughts I just escaped because I had time to think only in a loo :)

Subscribe now

at the end of 2023 I made a wish. only 1 clear wish related to my state, rather than any achievements. so the wish is to make my pace more slowly.

How does it influence my business?

I have focus on some hypothesis and I am doing other things until its time for it.

I am looking for clients with high AVG check, rather than hunting for 20 small.

I recalled that there should be time for learning, so I have weeks when I focus on one particular tool and learn it or have a course. For instance now I am improving my Clickup skills as there are so many updates there.

I do not start testing tools before I set up time for them, so I have 2 types of bookmarks to differentiate interesting materials and tools.

I leave first part of the day to reading and writing, as this brings me the most motivation and energy for the next part of the day.

I am thinking now of box and basketball, also with meditations, as I feel no clear mind and presence of anxiety.

All the meetings which I feel as too much for this week I can schedule for next week or the week after this week. And dont blame myself.

I am not sure If I can become successful with this approach, not working till 1 am or so, but I believe I can become happy with this approach and thats the only thing which matters to me.

“Hara Hachi Bu” - they say. So focus on your food and eat mindfully.

Subscribe now

Subscribe now

and I decided to continue creating content as this is a thing which inspires me the most. Did I tell you that I am fed up of meetings? Last days it is especially hard for me to conduct those meetings. so this week I was at the beach million of times.

• 20-30 minutes per day on the following

1. Read Product Hunt

2. Pop up at AI House

3. Do not forget about Vector

4. Find new tools in AI Breakfast 

5. Learn by heart Profit Snack

6. Look through Prompts Daily

   Subscribe now

• daily notes about my feelings

• daily 10-15 pages book

• weekly 1-2 hours I spend with main tools I work with

• 20-30 minutes for content creation

hmmm, interesting how is it to work at the beach in a restaurant and not know how IT world is going?

Subscribe now

when you become someone(I am not saying a bigboss. I mean - when you earn a little bit of self confidence), you understand that you cant only work, otherwise you loose any type of motivation. you start asking for a higher salary, you want to rest more and work less and other million ideas appear. they appear not because you are lazy or because you “have seen everything”, but because you simply overused your box of motivation.

and that box of motivation lies nowhere but in balance. omg, I sound like an old person with 10000 kilos of experience, but I am not. I am simply fed up of all those people who are saying - if you are not a hardworker and not ready to work until 9pm, you should not be here.

person can do anything they need in 5 hours. okay, if they are a founder, probs they need 8 hours. all the other time person is either doing silly work, or has lost their focus (those who are switching roles, disregard this).

1. Read High Output Management.

2. List all the things you do daily, weekly, monthly.

3. Create a table and understand:

   1. what should be automated

   2. what can be delegated to virtual assistants

   3. what should be delegated to experts

   4. what should be done now, later and what should not be done at all

4. Create blocks of work. For instance:

   1. product

   2. clients work

   3. reading news

   4. creating content

   5. searching new clients

5. Mark those blocks with colours and add all the tasks to Calendar with colours.

6. Add slacks during the day to be ready for unpredictable tasks.

7. Let yourself follow your Calendar and analyse your day, week, month.

8. Delegate. The more you can delete the better you know what you do.

Marina is a worldwide performance artist. She has consistently tested the limits of her own physical and mental endurance in her work, subjecting herself to exhaustion, pain and even the possibility of death.

Usually I am not a big fan of such type of literature, but cant stop reading this one.

Somewhere she travels with her lover for 5 year in a small bus, having nothing but money only for food and hunger for art. Her mother was the most cruel person in her life, but probably this provoked such persistence and desire to be on her own.

She is testing wild things, beating herself, being near a poison snake, letting people do whatever they want with her, shouting for hours at each other with her partner, being constantly naked in front of the audience, trying pharmaceuticals for schizo and tens of other performances.

And thats my favourite part. She is crazy and constantly on the verge of another world. And I can feel through the whole book how Marina charges from this non-triviality and how it inspires her.

And you know what? I believe in business you can be successful only if you are on the verge all the time. on the verge of normality, of stability, of common sense, of hunger :), of average. its up to you which face to test. but once you feel you are not like others in any senses, you are able to reach much more.

once I had even on a wallpaper on my phone with a quote. my quote :) “think like a gardener”. and you know what?

Clients usually tell me that they want to improve communication between developers and PMs, therefore they need a new soft or improvements in Jira.

Usually if they have Jira, I offer them to run fast from that soft, sorry all Jira fans. I know one guy who invested $100k into Jira development and now he wants to move to another soft.

Oh, I started writing this post yesterday and today a new topic is relevant. Therefore sorry, I will be the most inconsistent writer here and will start another topic without changing the title :)

Once I understood that people buy YOU, not your product, your service. They buy your energy and the feeling of belonging to you or your product.

So basically if you are non-trivial and simply do amazing job for your clients, showing how you do it, sooner or earlier you will have you community. Those who cant wait to read your new article, new substack or receive an invitation from you to your event.

People want to know they work with the company which has an amazing logo, attractive visuals and non-trivial founder. The one who does all the things upside down.

Do you do things upside down?

I know barely 5 people who do things like this, out of my 10000+ network. So start doing non-trivial things and show people how you do this. And do not do mistakes like I did with creating million of new products before having a solid brand.

PEOPLE AT FIRST HAVE TO WANT BE WITH YOU and only after they will want to buy from you.

Read books, watch courses which are not directly related to your sphere. By doing this you can become non-trivial.

Then you started meeting founders and you could hardly understand what you were selling. You knew you could do a lot - your services were in demand - but it took you half an hour to explain what you offered.

You realise you can basically only sell to those with pain points, not seek out the smallest gaps everywhere and push services.

Because in operations, founders have to be involved. If you push them now, you'll have to keep pushing during the work.

As a solo founder, you don't want to be hired as a pusher, because you quit that kind of role.

Share Opslab by Jane

When you're the founder of an operations consultancy, you have a very long list of hypotheses. You test them day and night, then realize you're not focused on any, so you start looking for someone more specialized.

You finally understand why founders hire for certain functions - you can't pitch, design, build websites, work with clients, do marketing, sales, and analysis all at once. You could try, but what are the end results?

As an operations consultancy founder you want to write and share insights, because that's the only truth source for clients. But you can't, because you prioritize clients over content. So you choose to build one more great dashboard for them.