I recently had an aha moment, after noticing a trend among impressive entrepreneurs…
They all say the same thing.
“I saw [thing I wanted], so I just [how I got it].”
And it worked for all of them.
What is this and how do we use it?
VC investor Mike Maples sums it up by saying that great entrepreneurs are really time travelers.
Most people live in the present and try to project forward. Great entrepreneurs start by arriving at the future and work backward from there.
Most people forecast. 1) Present –> 2) Future
Great Entrepreneurs backcast. 1) Future –> 2) Present
This is also similar to Habit 2: Begin With the End in Mind made famous in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.
Imagine a snot-dripping toddler shouting, “BUT I WANT IT NOW!” — when his parents say dinner first, then dessert.
It’s sort of like that. But when an adult does this in business, well, they’re then called a guru… (Jk, sort of).
Here are some examples.
James Clear early on heard other bloggers talking about the power of guest posting for sites with 50,000 followers. He thought, how could he do this for 500,000 instead? So skipped guest posting and went straight to syndication agreements (e.i. Time, Entrepreneur, Business Insider, etc.).
His pitch: “I’m an individual, but just treat me like a media brand.” And boom‚ it worked.
He saw the future state of having a massive audience… and worked backward to get there with syndication agreements (among other things).
Formula for James = Saw [guest posts working], so he just [did the ultimate guest posts which were syndications].
Shaan Puri a master at starting with the end in mind.
For everything he writes, he literally first writes the desired outcome at the top of the draft.
For his viral tweets, he’s identified the 8 emotions that get people to share things (i.e. go viral). And he writes the emotion he’s aiming for on the top of his page, and THEN drafts the tweet.
I’m currently taking his course on Power Writing and he shared his process. It’s amazing. The 8 emotions are:
- LOL – that’s so funny
- WTF – that pisses me off
- AWW – that’s soo cute
- WOW – now that’s amazing
- NSFW – now that’s crazy
- OHHH – now I get it!
- FINALLY – someone said what I FEEL
- YAY – that’s great new
So the emotion is the starting point, then works backward. He does the same concept for cold emails, headlines, etc.
Formula for Shaan = Saw [emotions that make people share tweets], so he just [started all tweets with the desired emotion].
The lists go on.
The point is that our brains are wired for linear, forward thinking. Not backward. We must make an intention effort to do this to get the benefit.
And not everyone will have exponential results.
But out of the ones that do.. they all start with the big result and work backward.