Hi Reader,

I wanted to mix things up a bit this week and share a guest issue from my friend, Romeen Sheth.

Romeen has experience bootstrapping (he took a business to $60M), bringing in private equity, and angel investing in over 75 companies. In his weekly newsletter, he breaks down lessons learned, practical frameworks, and shares tools and tactics to level up in business and life.

In today’s guest issue, he talks about why strategy isn’t everything and posits, “What would happen if you did the same thing but dialed up the intensity?”

If you like what you read, you can subscribe to Romeen’s newsletter for more:

​Click to subscribe to Romeen’s newsletter »​

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Guest issue from Romeen Sheth:

One of the most rewarding aspects of being in the startup world is the opportunity to develop relationships with highly motivated, hyper intelligent people that are driven by making an outsized impact on the world.

For the companies that do succeed at scale, we have a natural inclination to attribute this success to strategy, e.g. (1) the team made a unique observation about the market, (2) they found an appropriate entry point to disrupt the landscape, (3) they understood the customer in a way that incumbents did not.

Not only do we attribute the success to strategy, we glorify this attribution. Think about the last time you read a story about a successful company or individual - the focus is nearly always on the strategy.

I think something far more important is missing from these stories: intensity. Too many people focus on strategy. Not enough focus on intensity. Most of the time if you turn up the intensity, it will far outweigh a shift in strategy.

When I talk to Founders about problems in their business - the most common default diagnosis is “our strategy is wrong.” To be clear, sometimes this is right - something in the business is fundamentally misguided, it's not working and results suffer. But most of the time the fix required isn’t a shift in strategy, it's an increase in intensity.

My default response now to Founders who approach me with a problem is to ask:

“What would happen if you did the same thing, but you dialed up the intensity?”

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“What would happen if you did the same thing, but you dialed up the intensity?”

Here are a few recent examples I’ve run into:

• “Our content isn’t reaching enough people. We should focus on SEO, make our formatting nicer and optimize the time of day we send our content out.”
  • What if instead of these tweaks, you deliver quality content every single day instead of 1 day a week?
• “We aren’t reaching enough new prospects. We should revisit who our ideal customer is, create email templates for our team and create a presence on all major social platforms.”
  • What if instead, you sent 250 customized 1:1 messages that were individually tailored for each of the people you are trying to reach?
• “Our customers aren’t having a good experience. We should create a FAQ and put a chatbot in the product for them to help themselves.”
  • What if you sat down with each individual customer, listened to their specific problems and understood it in the context of their business?

The cool thing about this framework and line of thinking is it applies in every other aspect of our lives:

• “I want to be healthier”
  • Are you eating well and going to the gym every day?
• “I want to have better relationships”
  • Are you 100% present in every interaction you have?
• “I want to save more money”
  • Are you forgoing daily short term pleasure for long term accumulation?

Intensity and strategy are a classic chicken and egg problem. Most people veer towards developing strategy first and then (if at all) focus on intensity. I think about it the opposite way - simplify the scope, focus on intensity and then think about broader strategy.

Now you may be thinking - if this was as simple as I am laying out, then why do most people not do it? It is simple, but it’s not easy. Upping the intensity is uncomfortable. It requires you to be hyper disciplined, to push outside of your comfort zone and to be consistent.

My most common feedback to Founders these days is to put the strategy to the side and increase the intensity.

That said, I must warn you. If you increase the intensity you will most certainly crash - sometimes head first - into the wall. But remember, nobody ever broke through without some bruises and cuts along the way. Put a bandaid on and keep going.

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Romeen’s newsletter is all about his journey building a bootstrapped business to $60M. He's one of the smartest guys I know. I highly recommend you check it out. Here’s a link to subscribe if you’d like to receive more issues from him:

​Click to subscribe to Romeen’s newsletter »​

Have a great week!

—Nathan