When you and your team have clarity about the vision for a new project kickoff, then you will significantly increase the likelihood that you win and make your vision a reality. It pays big dividends to invest in your project kickoff vision clarity. Here’s an example of the 4 steps to create project kickoff vision clarity.
# 🏆 Step 1: Define “Winning”
– I want to launch a software side project that makes ≥$1,000 MRR by month X so I can start diversifying my income and eventually replace my day job.
😄 **Good Outcome** → Side project that does **$1,000 MRR**
🤩 **F#$@ Yea! Outcome** → Side project that does **$5,000 MRR**
⏲️ **Timeframe** → I want to pull this off within **X months**
# 🚫 Step 2: Set My Anti-Goals
—
## 💩 Don’t Want
– Hire and manage anyone other than freelancers. I am open to having a cofounder, though.
– Have this affect my performance in my day job
– Sacrifice more than X hours with my family.
– Work on an idea that is too boring.
## 💎 Want
– Spend ~2 months building out the MVP and then spend the majority of the X months on growth and revenue.
– Hone my craft and pick up a new technology, while remaining mindful not to spend too many innovation tokens
– Additional $1,000 – $5,000 each month to put into my savings.
– Meet interesting founders and makers in the process (Indie Hackers, Product Hunt, Trends Group, and other cool entrepreneur communities).
# ✉️ Step 3: Back of the Envelope (How might we get there?)
—
[Back of the Envelope Calculations]
## Analysis
So it looks like to hit my F#$@ Yea! goal ($5,000 MRR), I’ll need to find 200 customers paying $25 each month. That sounds doable, and I can always try raising my prices to hit my revenue goals. It still won’t be easy since I need to find a SaaS product that is worth paying >$20. I personally don’t have many subscriptions as high as that other than developer tools, so perhaps that is an area that I can explore and target. I think with X months I have a good amount of time to execute on my idea if I stay focused throughout it.
# 🚀 Step 4: What Momentum Can We Create in the Next Hour?
⏳ What could I do in **1 Hour**?
– Brainstorm a lot of ideas and shortlist ones that interest me and are viable business opportunities.
– Email/call/text people that I’ve worked well with in the past and talk with them about being potential cofounders/collaborators.
– Read cool SaaS case studies from Indie Hackers and Starter Story to get inspiration.
– Research the biggest pitfalls and risks of first-time entrepreneurs. Do a premortem.
– Research the pros and cons of platforms to see if it’s worth building on them, e.g. WordPress, Shopify, iOS App Store, etc.
🕰️ What could I do in **1 Day**?
– Sketch out an entire user flow of an idea from start to finish.
– Create and run a cheap Facebook ad to validate an idea.
– Hit up founders I know and have ideation sessions with them.
– Listen to the back catalog of My First Million Podcast for awesome ideas!
– Go on a vision quest.
🗓️ What could I do in **1 Week**?
– Create a pre-sales page to gauge interest and capture email addresses.
– Create a blog documenting my journey.
– Create design mockups of an idea.
– Create a no-code MVP of an idea.
📅 What could I do in **1 Month**?
– Build out a simple software MVP of an idea.
– Create and sell some informational product adjacent to the idea I want to execute.
Ready to make your own? You can use this Project Kickoff Vision Clarity Notion Template.