Tuesday Email: Minimum Viable Progress

Happy Tuesday!

Every Tuesday I'd like to offer strategies for the week ahead and a thought to fuel your action.

Eight years ago, I wanted to get back into reading.

I was excited about all the insights I'd gain, the knowledge I'd unlock.

But I didn't read a single page for an entire month.

Why?

Because I was obsessing over building the perfect system to capture everything.

Should I use Kindle or physical books?

What's the best highlighting tool?

How do I organize notes?

Which database software?

I stressed over every variable, trying to plan the ideal reading workflow before I actually started reading.

After a month of analysis paralysis, I finally just picked up a book and started.

You've done this too.

Waited for the perfect CRM before consolidating your tech stack. Waited for the perfect service model before launching that new offering. Waited for the perfect AI strategy before actually building anything.

We leave conferences inspired, take pages of notes, then three months later nothing has changed.

Here's what's happening: Research shows that perfectionism increases paralysis of cognition and action, particularly when facing uncertainty. And 85% of business leaders report experiencing decision distress.

We live as wealth managers in a world of uncertainty—which means if we're perfectionists (and most of us believe we have to be), we're going to have paralysis. We're going to keep analyzing, planning, re-analyzing that plan, and never actually do anything.

Here is the thing: action provides more value than the plan.

I know that sounds wrong.

Planning matters, right?

Of course it does.

But here's the thing: you learn more through doing than you do through planning. There's information you simply cannot predict by sitting and trying to plan, information you can only learn by doing.

This idea comes from Eric Ries and the Lean Startup methodology. He introduced the concept of Minimum Viable Product: a version of something that allows you to collect the maximum amount of validated learning with the least effort. Maximum insight, minimum effort.

But there's a deeper reason why we get stuck.

When we spend months building something in isolation, we get emotionally invested. I've done this. Built something for months, stayed so close to it, saw the vision so clearly. Then I brought it to the world and people said, "What the hell is this?" I got defensive. Hurt. Depressed. And then I just stopped.

That's the sunk cost fallacy in action. When we invest heavily upfront, we either become defensive when feedback comes, or we get heartbroken and quit.

This trap is especially dangerous for wealth managers. We're trained to be right. Fiduciary responsibility creates risk aversion. Every action feels like it must be perfect. We feel that if we take an action without all the information, we're risking our business and potentially putting our clients at risk.

But here's what has to change: In a world where everyone has access to the same information from ChatGPT, how are you going to be different? Learn by doing and gain information that only you can get by doing, not by sitting in front of an LLM.

Jeff Bezos said that most decisions should be made with about 70% of the information you wish you had. If you're waiting for 90%, you're likely being too slow.

In wealth management? That's terrifying.

But here's the key: Acting with incomplete information doesn't mean you have to use client data or risk client money. You can test a marketing idea with your own budget. You can try a new investment thesis with your own portfolio. You can get a handful of clients to consent to participate in something experimental, and some clients would love that opportunity.

It's not black or white. We tend to look at everything as black or white. But there are so many options in the middle if we allow ourselves to see them.

What this requires is an experimental mindset. Being okay with small failures in service of learning. Understanding that not every action needs to produce immediate ROI. That every imperfect action creates new information toward a future state of potential success. But that future state is uncertain. And the only way to discover it is to act.

Drew Houston, founder of dropbox, had a technically complex product idea: cross-platform file synchronization. He could have spent months building it, working through all the technical challenges, then launching and hoping people cared.

Instead, he created a simple screen recording video showing how the product would work. Smoke and mirrors. He posted it online with a landing page and asked people to join a beta waiting list.

His signups went from 5,000 to 75,000 overnight. For a product that didn't exist.

He validated a hypothesis without building anything. That's the power of learning by doing.

Here's the framework: Launch, Learn, Iterate, Scale.

Launch: Release a bare minimum version. Not the full vision. A basic client portal with just document sharing. A newsletter that's three bullet points instead of 2,000 polished words. A simple planning spreadsheet to test one idea.

Learn: See what actually happens. You'll discover that clients only use the portal on weekends. Or they only care about two of your seven planning modules. Or nobody opens the section you thought was most important. These insights only come from shipping something.

Iterate: Improve based on real feedback, not theoretical assumptions.

Scale: Only after you've learned what works. Not before.

Reid Hoffman, founder of LinkedIn, once said: "If you're not embarrassed by the first version, you launched too late."

Look at the early versions of LinkedIn, Facebook, the iPhone, Google. They all looked terrible. They look good now because they continued to iterate. But if they had waited to launch the polished version, they would never have learned the lessons that made those products great.

Scale is only achievable through iterative systems that prioritize less but better and done over perfect.

The question gets to: where do I start?

Carve out one hour this week. Not a planning hour, a doing hour. The Power Hour (different from those power hours we had in college). Uninterrupted work on the most important aspect of your business. Not client issues, not email, not team management. Work on something that moves you forward.

Here's a specific exercise: Use AI to create a version of something in under 30 minutes. A new newsletter format. A landing page for a service offering. A tax planning spreadsheet. Whatever it is, force yourself to ship it by the end of the day. Send it to five clients. Get immediate feedback before committing to something bigger.

Don't look for the big win. Get small wins. Let them build on each other. Create habit and momentum.

The reading system I use today?

It's better than anything I envisioned nine years ago. But it didn't come from that month of planning. It came from just starting and learning what worked by doing it. I may have lost some data along the way, but I've read more, learned more, and built something more useful than I could have ever planned.

Learn by doing. That’s the answer.

The best is ahead!

-Matt