Do I want the business, or the escape?

A guided 16 to 20 minutes conversation, here in TAIU. This exercise does not write a business plan and does not assume that starting is the brave answer.

A man around thirty locking up a shop at closing time, slipping a notebook of his own into a canvas bag

If your job got substantially better tomorrow, would you still want to start this?

It is a fair question. The answer takes about four seconds to arrive.

Wanting out is a legitimate answer. It is just a different problem with a much cheaper solution.

What you'll look at

01What you want to start
02Why now
03What you would give up
04What you have already done

A note from Mark

I have sat across from a lot of people who wanted to start something. The ones who went on to do it well were almost never the most enthusiastic in the room. They were usually the ones who had already started in some small, unglamorous way. They had not thought to mention it, because it did not feel like a business yet.

The question I would put to you first is not whether the idea is good. It is whether you want this work or whether you want out. Both are legitimate. They are not the same. The second one is much better solved by changing jobs than by taking on eighteen months of financial pressure and no colleagues.

Read my full view ↓

Then I would want to know what you are actually prepared to give up, because everybody says everything and almost nobody means it. Look at the last two years. If you have not given up one evening a week for this, that is information.

And I would look for the smallest version. Most people imagine a beginning that requires resignation, funding and a website, and then conclude they cannot start. You can almost always find a version that costs a few hundred pounds and a fortnight, and it will teach you more than a year of thinking will.

What you'll get

This will not sort you into a personality type.It will give you answers about your own life that you can test.

01
The real motive
02
What you would trade
03
Existing evidence
04
The smallest move
+
Your TAIU handover: a summary of what the conversation found, written so you can take it with you.

See everything included ↓

01What you say you want to start
02Why now
03The motive, honestly
04What you are actually prepared to give up
05What evidence already exists
06How reversible this is
07The rival reading
08What deserves protecting
09The credible alternative
10What this exercise cannot decide
11What remains unresolved
12The smallest credible first move

When you finish

Bring it back to your tree.

Your tree is where TAIU keeps a picture of your whole life, in parts like work, money and health.

At the end, the conversation asks how Work and purpose feels for you right now, in your own words. It also asks what, if anything, would feel different. Nothing changes on your tree unless you say it changes.

The conversation writes this summary for you. Keep the sheet, print it or paste it into My Tree. Nothing from the conversation is stored by TAIU.

Session
Date
The part of life this belongs to
How you described it
What would feel different
What we found
The alternative we tested
What deserves protecting
What should change, if anything
Next actions
What to notice or find out
What remains unresolved

Open My Tree

What now?

01 · Save it
Your honest motive, named.
02 · Test it
Say what you want to start out loud to somebody who will not be polite.

See more ↓

What I would do

01
Describe it in one sentence without the word platform.
02
Ask why now, and be suspicious of the first answer.
03
Check whether the current job is the actual problem.
04
Find the smallest version that would teach you something real.
05
Set a condition that would tell you to stop.

Test it

01
If your job improved substantially tomorrow, would you still start?
02
What have you done in the last month that was not planning?
03
What would you have to give up, and have you given it up before?

The alternative

The expected conclusion is start or do not start. The more common finding is that the business is a proxy. Somebody wants out of a manager, a commute, a role that stopped fitting three years ago and the business is the only door they can see. That is worth knowing, because if the escape is the point then a different job solves it faster, more cheaply and with far less collateral damage to a household. The second common finding is the reverse: the person is already doing the work, quietly, for free, at weekends and has been for months, and the only thing they are actually deciding is whether to charge for it. Those two people need entirely different conversations and both of them arrive saying the same sentence.

Think about this

What you would actually be starting, in plain words.
What changed this year that made it urgent.
What you would give up, and what you have already declined to give up.
What you have done rather than planned.
What could be undone in three months.

Take this to Ask Mark

You have done the exercise. Now look again at what it found.

This looks at what you found and helps you understand it. It is not another exercise to repeat.

Take this to Ask Mark →

Put this into practice

TRY · 12 MIN

Failure Before Failure

TAIU

It is a year from now and this failed. Write the reason before you start.

Try it →

Was this useful?

READ · ARTICLE

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Argues that a young venture is choosing between a small number of genuinely different routes to market, rather than executing one obvious plan. The choice is reversible for less time than founders think.

The Founder's Dilemmas

Noam Wasserman

A decade of data on the early decisions that decide whether a venture survives: who joins, on what terms and who holds control. The uncomfortable finding is that most damage is done in the first months, socially rather than commercially.

Recommended by the TAIU community

What helped you?

If you've read, watched, listened to or tried something that helped you think about this differently, we'd like to hear about it.

We review recommendations before sharing them with the community.

Finished the exercise?

What did this uncover?

Tell us whether it helped and what you discovered. It takes less than a minute.

A stranger turning a rough prototype over in their hands at a market stall while the maker stands back and watches

Next tool

Is this idea real

When the motive is clear and the idea is next

Continue →Should I leave →

Further thinking

Effectuation: Elements of Entrepreneurial Expertise
Saras Sarasvathy
Quit
Annie Duke
Working Identity
Herminia Ibarra

See the thinking ↓

Article

Effectuation: Elements of Entrepreneurial Expertise

Saras Sarasvathy

Expert founders were found to start from what they already have, who they know and what they can afford to lose, rather than from a goal and a plan. It reframes starting something as a question about available means rather than about vision.

Book

Quit

Annie Duke

The counterweight to almost everything else written about avoidance. Duke argues that we are far better at persisting than at stopping, and that most of the cost of a bad commitment is paid after the point where we already knew. If the thing you keep postponing is something you have quietly decided against, this is the book that gives you permission to say so and a way to test whether you are right.

Book

Working Identity

Herminia Ibarra

Ibarra followed people through major career and identity change and found that almost none of them thought their way to an answer first. They acted first, in small reversible experiments, and their sense of who they were caught up afterwards. It is the strongest available argument against sitting still until you feel certain.

Article

One-way doors and two-way doors

Jeff Bezos

Why reversible decisions should often be made faster.