Tool 51 · Develop your business
This exercise does not write a business plan and does not assume that starting is the brave answer.
A guided 16 to 20 minute conversation using ChatGPT. Free, no account, nothing to sign up to.
01
Copy
Take the TAIU prompt.
02
Paste
Open ChatGPT.
03
Talk
One question at a time.
Copies the TAIU prompt. Paste it into ChatGPT.
You don't need ChatGPT Plus. The free version is fine.
It is a fair question and 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 explore
A note from Mark
I have sat across from a lot of people who wanted to start something, and 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 and 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, and the second one is much better solved by changing jobs than by taking on eighteen months of financial pressure and no colleagues.
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
01
The real motive
02
What you would trade
03
Existing evidence
04
The smallest move
+
Your TAIU handover — a portable summary of everything the conversation established.
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.
What I would do
Describe it in one sentence without the word platform.
Ask why now, and be suspicious of the first answer.
Check whether the current job is the actual problem.
Find the smallest version that would teach you something real.
Set a condition that would tell you to stop.
Test it
If your job improved substantially tomorrow, would you still start?
What have you done in the last month that was not planning?
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
Take this to Ask Mark
Interpretation, not another copy-and-paste exercise.
Take this to Ask Mark →Finished the exercise?
Tell us whether it helped and what you discovered. It takes less than a minute.
Further thinking
Effectuation: Elements of Entrepreneurial Expertise
Saras Sarasvathy
Quit
Annie Duke
Working Identity
Herminia Ibarra
Article
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
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
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
Jeff Bezos
Why reversible decisions should often be made faster.