Ruthless Prioritization

Sup nerds,

If you want to take my time, you need to get what I’m working on.

That’s why I’ve instilled a very simple rule for myself: if you want to chat, get coffee, or do a podcast, then you have to at least sign up for a free trial of Memelord Technologies.

It’s not about the money—like I said, you can literally sign up for a free trial, try it for 3 minutes, and then go cancel it. I really don’t give a fuck. I don’t need your $6. It’s just a matter of respect. If we’re getting on the phone and you’re taking up my time, then you should be familiar with what I’m staying up until 3 AM every night building. If you’ve tried my software, then I’m happy to chat. Simple as that.

If you’re a founder, you get this.

My wife said this was ruthless.

But it’s a free trial. It’s literally free. I don’t think it’s ruthless. I think it’s just basic respect. You don’t ask an author to come on your podcast without reading their book. You don’t interiew a musician without listening to their latest album (I did run a music blog remember). And you don’t ask a founder to ride the subway to get coffee with you without trying their software. It’s not ruthless, it’s mutual respect.

Why should I spend my time and energy talking to people or taking the subway down to people who literally can’t even take their time to try a free product? Like I said it’s not about the money. It’s about respect—and it’s about differentiating between signal and noise. This rule is such a great filter for seeing where I should allocate my time. Who is trying to leech from you? Who is trying to waste your time? And who is supporting it? Sure I may be making some enemies with this rule, but were they ever really friends in the first place… or were they just time and energy suckers?

If you believe in what you’re working on, you’ll do things that seem “ruthless” to others, but totally logical to yourself (cough cough Elon).

I call this ruthless prioritization and I am the king of it.

Ruthless Prioritization 101

I saw a tweet the other day that was like a founder’s only job is to figure out what is and it isn’t bullshit. What is signal and what is noise?

Who should you spend your time with?

Your customers. Your team. Your wife and dog. And most importantly alone by yourself.

What marketing channels should you spend your time on growing?

The ones that make the most money.

I know this sounds stupid or obvious, but a lot of people just try to grow social media channels so they have a big following or seem “hot”.

For me, TikTok has driven zero sales, so I don't even have the app on my phone. Meanwhile, LinkedIn is driving tons of sales, so I spend more time on it. Yes, TikTok is the hotter app, and LinkedIn is “cringe” and “lame”, but which one is paying the bills that's all that matters. Is making money cringe? 

What feature requests are high-signal and what are noise?

The high-signal requests come from power users who are in your product everyday.

The noise comes from random VCs and Ivy League yappers on the timeline who love to give advice without you even asking for it and without ever trying your product because they think they’re smarter than everyone else.

Your power users can be a lot less “prestigious” than Harvard VCs but their tips and ideas are infinitely more valuable. Take your power users’ seriously. Take everyone else unseriously. Power users’ ideas are signal, the rest noise.

MOST IMPORTANTLY:

Don’t just listen to power users’ ideas!!! EXECUTE.

I’ve seen this with way too many lazy ivy league type founders. They’d listen to their users’ complain about problems and then not do anything. They’d intellectualize the problem and discuss it for hours and not do jackshit. Well here’s the thing.

You’re not a fucking therapist. You’re not paid to listen, you’re paid to execute and solve problems. You’re a founder. Listen to your power users and execute fast. That’s how you keep them around.

4 AM. No sleep. Money first. I’m 27. I can go hard and have a few sleepless nights and feel like shit to build my dreams. Dreams over health sometimes. Like I said, ruthless prioritization.

Ruthless Judgement

Everyone who told you not to be judgmental is fucking retarded.

You should probably be more judgmental. You should be judgmental about who you spend your time with. You should be judgmental about the decisions people make. You should be judgmental about what people are working on.

No you shouldn’t judge if someone’s gay or whatever.

But the concept of judgement is good. The whole feel-good anti-judgement movement was made up by the same idiots who say that men can compete in women’s sports and looting cities is a form of reparations and you should say land acknowledgements before speeches. They have terrible judgement! Words are meaningless to them.

Trust your judgement. Trust your gut. Because your code or content can reach millions of people, good ruthless judgement is more important than ever now.

Ruthless judgement. Over your time, product decisions, content, etc.

Every time I spend an hour getting coffee with a random schmuck, it’s an hour not helping 1000s of my customers or writing bangers for the millions of people seeing my content every month. The stakes are much higher now and get higher everyday.

Humans were not made for their actions impacting millions and even billions of people. So you better fucking adjust. Learn to ruthlessly prioritize and judge.

As Naval said, judgement is a skill.

And like any other skill, you get good judgement by practicing everyday. Mini judgements everyday. Everyday is motherfucking judgement day.

Memes of the Week

Bangers only from me and my customers

Thanks for reading nerds.

Create some cool shit this week.

Jason “The Memelord” Levin

Founder of Memelord Technologies, Author of Memes Make Millions

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