You’re allowed to do less. Far less, in fact.

For when you’re doing everything right and it’s still not working.

You’ve been doing the things. You post, you send the emails, you turn up to the networking nights, you keep the website ticking over. And after all that effort, it’s still too hard.

You can’t just stop doing something, because you don’t know which ones are actually working. So sometimes you guess — because any decision feels better than none.

I’ve watched founders I care about get within a click of spending two grand on a brand-new website because the old one “wasn’t converting”.

black and white and smiling - phot of Jules

When the website was never the problem. The offer underneath it was unclear, or it was pointed at the wrong person, or the leak was somewhere else entirely.

So if you’re done with the bigger, faster, louder, more crowd and you’re ready to stop — stop doing the things that don’t work for you, stop guessing

That’s the whole reason The First Thing exists.

So, what is it?

(Definitely not something else to add — quite the opposite.)

Six weeks where we take your business out and lay it on the table and work out, properly, with proof rather than guesswork, which one or two things are quietly carrying the whole operation.

And then you can give yourself permission to put the rest down.

This is the promise

The relief of doing less, on purpose, because you finally know what’s worth doing. No more spreading yourself like too little butter over too much toast.

You’ll know where you’re going, who you’re going there with, what you already have for each stage of the journey — and what you don’t.

The summer pilot is open now

It’s small, and at a lower price than it’ll ever be again. Because you’re helping me shape it for everyone else.

You don’t need more, you just need to see what you’ve already got.

If that sounds like you, put your name down for a pilot spot.

Putting your name down also brings you into The Snug. A small room for founders and creatives who love the work but find the business around it has become a slog. More about The Snug >