I don't know if this will work
But I'm documenting it anyway
Last week I wrote about the work resolution I made heading into 2026: run toward the pain and attack it with dogged focus + a 10/10 standard of quality. It was me thinking through why I kept feeling like I could’ve executed things better + what I needed to do to in order to change that (after all, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over + over and expecting different results).
So this week, I started implementing it. It’s not perfect - definitely not perfect actually. I don’t have complete confidence in whether every decision I’m making is the “right” one, but it’s the first step in the right direction. It’s all about building momentum right now + as time goes on, I can make necessary tweaks.
Here’s what implementing this plan has looked like so far:
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The brain dump
As I was prepping for 2026, during the last week of December before we all took off for the holiday break was to write down everything I was currently doing and everything I wanted to do. Wasn’t in a prioritized way, just a “taking inventory” exercise.
The list ended up being a bit longer than I expected. And what struck me wasn’t the volume of it, but that probably 50% of what was on there were “shiny objects.” Something new, doing “more” in terms of channels, testing out something else. Things that are exciting as a marketer, but when zooming out and asking myself, didn’t necessarily translate directly to my #1 goal: exceeding our revenue target.
Those were more of what I ended up categorizing as a “bets” bucket: new initiatives, experiments, things that could be valuable but aren’t yet proven to directly impact revenue generation.
And in a year where I have ONE goal and ZERO wiggle room, those bets need to be just that - big bets that I take on if + when I have bandwidth, not things I’m actively working on and pulling me away from the items I know do impact my goal positively that can’t afford to be neglected.
So I categorized this brain dump list into three categories:
Core work
Things I do every day/week that directly drives pipeline or support the systems that drive pipeline.
Think: ad optimizations, ABM plays, PLG flow optimizations, sales enablement content, podcast recordings that fuel our content engine, etc.
Supporting work
Things that matter but aren’t directly tied to future pipeline/revenue generation.
Think: market research, vendor/customer relationship maintenance, etc. These shouldn’t be cut, but they need to be relegated to “as time permits,” + not at the expense of any core work.
Big bets
This contains everything else. I purposely include “Big” in “Big bets” because with any remaining time/resources we have, if we’re committing to something additional, it needs to have a potential disproportionate upside. If it’s nominal, I keep it on the list, but make a note of that + that it shouldn’t be taken on until we hit on the ones with higher potential.
Think: new initiatives, new channels, new mediums, different ways of executing, etc. These are the “sexy” things that we want to do but aren’t yet proven to be connected to the goal.
And that’s why these live in their own category. If I finish my core work + am tracking to goal, great - let’s get curious + go explore. But they’re not put on my calendar ahead of time. In a way, I use them as a “carrot” for myself to get through all of the core work that needs to be done + then I can explore these.
Bringing it to the team
This quality + focus problem is not uniquely mine. I’d been hearing things from our team that all effectively told me, “I need to know what to focus on and how to tell if I’m making progress toward it.” So I’m taking them through this journey as I go through it myself.
This past week we had a team meeting where I laid out the two primary goals for the company and for marketing. Then I had Elie, a member of our team who’s applied this framework to his own work a number of times, to walk them all through how he’s thinking about this + applying it to his own work.
This was an intentional decision for a few reasons.
First, this bridges it from theory to practice. Everyone on the team knows what Elie does + by seeing how he approaches the goals and ties them back to his day-to-day, they’re able to connect the dots for themselves to see how they should apply it to their roles.
Second, I didn’t want this to be an exercise of me telling them what to do. This was a peer showing them what’s worked for them before + their approach to it. It wasn’t a top-down mandate from me.
And then as we were heading into the weekend, I sent a note to the team that said:
“Something to think about over the weekend
Hey team - now that we’ve spent some time going over how we want to operate this year (focus + 10/10 quality) and have our overarching company + marketing goals, I want each of you to spend some time thinking about how you uniquely can help us achieve those.
What are the 1-3 things that, if you truly focus on + do at a 10/10 level, you are confident will help drive more revenue for us?
Some of these will be daily or weekly tasks + that’s completely ok. There are fundamental things that need to be done regularly because they work. Kobe Bryant would take 800 jump shots every day + that’s why he was the 🐐.
Some of these will be larger “projects” which will require steady progress made over time. The important thing here will be mapping out what steps need to be taken and making sure we’re staying on track with those.
Once we lock those in, we can ruthlessly protect our time + capacity so we can do those things well. Everything else that comes up will need to be evaluated from the lens of, “Does this tie in with the work I’m focused on currently? Will it drive more pipeline/revenue for us? Or is this something that falls into the ‘supporting’ or ‘big bets’ categories?””
The goal of this isn’t to be a micromanager or reduce the scope of roles. It’s to provide clarity. And more importantly, to give ourselves permission to say no to the things that pull us away from what actually matters + achieving our ultimate goals.
What this looks like for me
As I wrap up every workday, the last thing I do is set my “Big 3” for the next day. These are 2-3 items that, if I do NOTHING else over the course of the day, need to get done/have progress made toward.
I started doing this last year because at the end of nearly every day, my to-do list was somehow longer than when the day began. I would reflect back on the day and feel like I hadn’t accomplished enough. So I used this list to basically say “if I do these 2-3 items, no matter how few/many other things I do, my day can be viewed as a success.”
This sounds simple, but it’s surprisingly difficult because it requires thought to weigh out what I could do on the Eisenhower Matrix (urgency/impact). It forces me to prioritize before my day gets hijacked by Slack messages, “urgent” asks, etc.
Then at the end of each day, I come back to that list to note what progress has been made toward them.
Finished it? Love it, cross it off the list.
Made good progress? Great, keep the momentum going + have it on the list for tomorrow.
Didn’t get to it? Why not? Was something truly more important/impactful, or did I get caught up in the day-to-day + get distracted?
Nothing crazy here, just something I can keep front and center for myself every day. As the old saying goes, “keep the main thing the main thing.”
Accountability + visibility for leadership
I restarted the weekly Slack update I send to my CEO this week. This is something I used to do when I first joined Loxo + it worked really well. Helped Matt understand where I was focusing my time + why. Also, there’s just something about being externally accountable to someone (whether they specifically ask for it or by proactively having them be the external party) + putting a “scoreboard” on yourself that changes how I think about my week (and what I act on).
The format is super simple:
What was accomplished this past week
When possible, think outcomes vs. tasks.
Example: “led webinar on [topic]” is a task, but “47 ICP-fit prospects attended webinar on [topic]” is an outcome. I’m training myself to think in outcomes because that’s what actually matters.
What we’re working on next week
Similar to the above, frame this around what results we’re trying to drive. This also helps them to understand what your priorities are + see how what you’re doing ties to larger company initiatives.
Example: “updating the homepage” is vague + doesn’t contain the why behind it being a priority. “Updating the homepage with language more specific to our core ICP” is stronger. This then gives you the opportunity to put what your success indicators are for it, i.e. “This should increase website visit to handraiser conversion rate by XX%.”
What we missed this week
Here I’m being transparent about what didn’t go to plan. The curveballs that came our way + the things that aren’t panning out how we’d like them to. What happened, what was done about it, what's the next step to course correct. Normally we’d shy away from something like this as we don’t want our manager to see us in a “not performing” light, but this actually does the opposite. It builds trust, it helps them see you taking accountability, and it shows them you’re internalizing misses + learning from them vs. hiding from them.
Example: "Didn't hit webinar attendance target of 75 - landed at 47. Root cause here was we only promoted this externally for 2 weeks (vs. our normal 4 weeks) due to [reason]. To course correct, we're [insert relevant resolution here]. Our next webinar is on [date] and we’ve incorporated [reason] into our plan for that so we don’t have that same miss again.”
The version I’m doing now is different from the one I used to do. It’s more concise + outcomes-focused as when I did this previously it was just me on the marketing team so I was doing a lot of execution. TBH I’m not sure yet if this is the final form I’ll keep using - have a feeling it’ll iterate some as my CEO + I have some back and forth on these so that it incorporates everything he wants to see vs. what I think he wants to see.
There’s something about putting your results (good or bad) in writing every week that forces me to be honest, not just about what’s working + what isn’t, but to also force myself to learn + adapt from it.
Is this the right move?
I don’t know yet if this will work. It’s a gamble. It’s a good bit more structure than our team has ever had before.
I know in theory it’ll work because it forces clarity on what matters, incorporates more accountability, + gets indicators in place so we can see if we’re making progress. But as with everything, it’ll come down to seeing how it plays out in practice.
Ultimately this is v1 for us. I’m very intentional about calling things “v1” with our team as there’s an underlying connotation in there that a) it’s the very first version of something and b) that any time you see something like “v1”, you know that there will usually be a “v2”, then a “v3”, and so on. So they understand that we’ll iterate, that this isn’t the final version of how we’ll absolutely be doing it moving forward.
If this is something you’re interested in, let me know + I’ll come back in a month or two with a follow up on this. What’s working, what I changed, where I was wrong, etc. If this is something you’ve already implemented or have gone through yourself, let me know! I’m sure there are a handful of lessons that you learned + skinned knees that we can avoid by learning from those.
Book quote of the week
“When I put all the pieces together, it looked complicated, but each piece was simple. Most big things are simple in the specific, much less so in the general.”
- The Score Takes Care of Itself, by Bill Walsh
See you next Saturday,
Sam