The Resilient Entrepreneur, Edition #136
Hi there
I hope you had a great week!
Here are the topics in today's edition:
- The Minimum Project Duration Is 2 Months. For Everything.
- Raise Your Voice: Don’t Use Compliance as an Excuse
Please reach out with comments, questions, or suggestions for articles!
Talk soon,
Tom
TACTICS FOR RESILIENT ENTREPRENEURS
The Minimum Project Duration Is 2 Months. For Everything.
The world is full of dependencies, and that’s the reason everything takes so much time. But this isn’t an excuse to freak out or do nothing.
Move fast and break things! That’s the battle cry for many entrepreneurs, and I couldn’t agree more that the world needs more godspeed these days.
Most things don’t happen because people talk about doing something, but because they are starting to get their hands dirty. I’m definitely on the doer side of things, pushing myself (and others!) to switch from talking mode to execution mode all the time.
Nevertheless, it’s time for a reality check. Even if you are a doer, even if you push yourself hard, some things take time: Dependencies loom everywhere. That’s not an excuse to stay in talking mode, but the examples below are meant to help keep your temper and impatience in check.
Example 1: Switch to a new computer
Let’s start with a very simple example. Some time ago, I decided to buy a new computer with massive memory to run a local AI stack. Due to the memory price surge and device availability crunch, I bought a second-hand device.
It took me a while to find a suitable second-hand device, and when it arrived, it had a battery problem and needed repair. Once the device was returned, one month had already passed. And because life doesn’t stop just because I want to set up my new computer, it took me another month before I found time to install all the necessary software on my new machine.
Example 2: Register a new company
Some time ago, I decided to bundle all my side activities in an LLC. Not a big deal, you would think. Registering a new company is easy, but it takes time before you can start doing business, since everything is interconnected: You cannot open a bank account without registering the company first. But to register the company, you need to visit a notary first. And to file for social security contributions, you need to specify your bank account number, which you don’t have yet.
Try to go through this procedure over the lazy summer months, and it will take you three rather than two months.
Example 3: Launch a political campaign
This year, I was involved in a political campaign for the first time in my life. True to the DNA of Switzerland, my home country, the campaign was launched by a bunch of motivated people who thought it was better to do something than just talk about it.
Well, even if everybody is motivated, agreeing on a core message and aligning everybody takes longer than anticipated. If I compare our intention in the first meeting with what we launched two months later, the gap could not be wider. And last but not least, you have to time the launch of a political campaign to the political discourse. When everything was ready, we had to delay the launch to wait for the perfect time window.
Once again, the minimum project duration for anything is two months.
Example 4: File for a grant
Switzerland is a great country, and part of its greatness is its multilingualism. But multiple languages in a small country bring about their own challenges, for example, when writing a book. Two colleagues and I did so, and due to popular demand, we decided to translate the book from German into French.
Because the Swiss market is small and the French-speaking market is even smaller, we asked various foundations for a grant. You really cannot translate a book into another language without a professional translator.
Most foundations in Switzerland are still a bit old-school. You have to apply by letter and submit a ton of forms and information together with your request. So that’s what we did. We fired the paperwork and a sample copy of our book in German into the void.
How long did it take until we heard back? You’re right, it took exactly two months until we heard from two different foundations. Luckily for us, one of the foundations awarded us the grant without the necessity to submit further paperwork.
Example 5: Wait for an answer
Back to business. At Yonder, the SaaS company I co-founded, we had a couple of requests from other software companies to interface with their systems. After some initial discussions, we agreed with each of those companies to set up a collaboration agreement and then take it from there.
What happened? Nothing. One of the companies is part of a French conglomerate; the other is a German Mittelstand company.
Pretty much 2 months later, we received the draft contracts from both parties on the same day.
Conclusion
Don’t take it personally when stuff takes time. You should know by now that the minimum project duration is two months, irrespective of what you try to accomplish.
If you’re a doer, what can you do?
I suggest you develop a work technique that supports you in monitoring and leading multiple projects in parallel. If you think I’m just sharing wisdom without proof, this article sheds light on the organizational secret I use every day. Whether it fits your needs or not is for you to decide; feel free to adapt to your personal work style and needs.
But one last piece of advice: Don’t spend too much time on the tool setup. You wanted to run multiple projects in parallel, not waste your time and energy on tooling discussions.
STRATEGIES FOR RESILIENT ENTREPRENEURS
Raise Your Voice: Don’t Use Compliance as an Excuse
Democracy needs leaders who raise their voice, irrespective of what their compliance team says. A true story from the campaign trail.
This year, I was involved in a political campaign for the first time in my life. It was a grassroots campaign, starting at zero.
One of the most important things for a grassroots campaign is the initial committee. They help you spread the message through their networks, giving the campaign its initial momentum.
Choosing the committee members is a strategic task. The more diverse the committee, the better the chances of the grassroots campaign gaining ground. That’s why we asked a broad range of well-known people throughout the country.
This article covers one memorable response I received from a potential committee member. It is not an outlier, unfortunately, but highlights the limits of free speech in an overly compliant world.
“Compliance Says No”
Our campaign promotes the defense against ballistic missiles and drones in Switzerland, my home country. As an active reserve officer in the Swiss Armed Forces and an entrepreneur, this topic is close to my heart. Yonder, the B2B SaaS company I co-founded, depends on data centers that need to be protected against missiles and drones. Furthermore, no data center runs without electricity, so our electricity grid infrastructure needs protection, too.
That’s why we reached out to many critical infrastructure CEOs, asking them to support our campaign on the committee. We thought they would be equally interested in a protective umbrella above their billion-dollar assets as we are.
Some of them were. But one of them gave a disturbing answer:
Personally, I find this cause very important and worthy of support. I have had my involvement internally reviewed on a confidential basis and cannot currently speak publicly on behalf of my organization.
Wait, what? Yes, you read correctly. It looks like internal compliance told the CEO not to raise his voice as a citizen.
Is It An Excuse?
Maybe I’m exaggerating because I don’t know the full story.
Maybe internal compliance was just an excuse, because the CEO didn’t want to support our campaign. That’s perfectly fine in a democracy. But if this was the case, why didn’t he tell me that he had a different opinion and chose not to support us?
At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter whether internal compliance blocked the participation or the CEO chickened out himself. What does matter, however, is that leaders cannot or choose not to voice their beliefs and opinions. That’s a bad sign for democracy.
Conclusion: Stand Your Man or Woman
The world has become messy and dangerous, and we need people who fight for their convictions. We need people who raise their voices and defend their opinions, even if people disagree with them.
If our society is unable and unwilling to give our leaders the freedom to raise their opinions, it will be the elderly and the alumni who call the shots for our future.
About Me
I’m a tech entrepreneur, active reserve officer, and father of three — writing about entrepreneurship, leadership, and crisis management from hard-won experience. No AI, no fluff, no promos. Just plain-text insights for people building and leading under pressure.
When I’m not solving problems, I find clarity in the mountains around Zermatt.
If this was useful, here’s how to get more:
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