So that I can focus on family stuff, and thinking stuff
Figure out family stuff
“Learn to think”
Elucidate values and what I want to do
1b. Some career capital/upskilling
I don’t know what career I want, long-term
But, I know what I enjoy and am good at, so getting more experience in those realms
I also think that I don’t want to become a specialist (e.g., in automations/systems) - I’d rather be a COO/CoS type, than a “systems specialist”
I’d like to be e.g. a “Founders Associate”
1c. Money
Some money coming in
World 2: “as much money as I can get”
Makes sense to optimise for earning as much as I can
I’ve been depleting my savings for a while, so to top them up at the fastest rate
Also, more money = more training, tutoring, things like therapy, etc
Founders Assistant > Automation Guy
Imagine I work at Outcapped for a year (hypothetical, imagining my CV)
I would rather be Rob’s “special projects” guy, “founder’s assistant”, than “the automation guy”
Like Brent’s reference: “I feel like I’ve found a right-hand guy”, vs “Alex is really good at automations” - boooo, boring! Too specialised! Not meta-level enough!
Maybe I need to pitch this to Rob more clearly. What “special projects/founder’s assistant” could look like.
🚨 this feels like the most important thing to communicate
Lock in a pay that allows me to be a founder’s assistant, rather than an automation guy?
I don’t want “automation guy” to be my career path.
I don’t have a clear plan/career path, but I have a strong sense that “COO/CoS-type” is much more likely to be right than “automations/systems guy”
I have the meta brain for systems and automations, for sure. I just don’t want it to be all I do. I want to have the meta, broad skill set of a COO/CoS. I don’t want to be a “systems specialist”. I’d much rather be a Rob than a Mikee Mercado of Anti Entropy. I don’t want to set up CRMs to a living!
2. High pay as useful forcing function, or blocker to my ideal kind of work?
Potentially can’t “have cake and eat it too” at a cash-strapped startup
Rob has said that higher pay would mean certain things would make less sense for me to do
So, would I rather charge less to do a broader range of stuff?
I don’t want a higher rate to force me to only do automations stuff, rather than “founder’s associate”-type stuff
Pay at upper limit of affordability = from “pitch in wherever is useful” to “no longer can do “schlep-y” things, can only do things that are high leverage immediately”
But, at an early stage company, there may be more “schlep” needed, than high leverage things lying around
Maybe I’d rather do broad ops generalist stuff too (and things like client acquisition)
Upskill → learn how to onboard clients, learn how to do all the schlep-y stuff like incorporating them, setting up payroll etc. Useful broad experience, even if I just do it once. Vs “you cost too much for it to make sense, we’ll just have you doing backend automations”
Or, is higher pay a useful forcing function?
As Rob said, maybe this is good - maybe this is a forcing function for finding the high leverage stuff.
However, as above, as there’s limited cash flow currently, maybe it’s also tricky re: not being able to afford paying me to do “schlep”-y things
And there may not be loads of high leverage things lying around
It would make sense, if my plan was something like “I’m happy to charge less for 1/2/3 months, in order to get onboarded, do some schlep-y things, help the business grow, and then charge a more competitive rate (or, be an employee) once there’s more cashflow”
If I feel that it’s true that I could work there for a year, then I think I’d feel better about this “start with low pay” thing. I guess because I don’t have know it feels to work there yet, it’s harder to know
So maybe there’s a “low pay for 2 weeks or a month, to get a feel” thing?
3. How true are these stories?
Story 1: “I’d rather be more useful and paid less”
“Pay doesn’t make that much of a difference to me”
Not true. More capital, more savings, more ability for trainings, expanding opportunity space due to higher net worth. More future-proof
I have a naive part that’s like “whatever man, money is fake, the amount of money in my savings has never correlated to my happiness, it’s not a big deal as long as I’m not ‘in the red’!” - vs another part which is like “it’s better to have more savings, it gives more flexibility, autonomy, possibility-space. Don’t be naive”
“I’d rather be able to do whatever is useful, without worries about the economic feasibility of what I’m doing per hour""
Story 2: “I’d rather be paid more”
It’ll mean that I have more circumscribed AORs and I won’t get to see as much of the company
It may actually make the career capital worse, as I’ll be more specialised/niche
But, maybe neither the “COO/CoS” or the “automations guy” path are correct, as I’m stumbled across both with ~poor epistemics and awareness of my own values. So perhaps, better to earn more in the short term, if I’m likely to pivot away from this path entirely anyway