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You Don’t Need Another Playbook. You Need a Flashllight in the Fog.

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You Don’t Need Another Playbook. You Need a Flashllight in the Fog.

There’s never been more advice available to founders. Playbooks, podcasts, courses, LinkedIn posts. It’s an endless firehose of tactics.

So why do so many founders still feel stuck?

Not from a lack of input. Or from a lack of effort. But because they lack that single, simple next step that starts them in a new direction.

I know. It’s a struggle I’ve faced in adopting new technology, growing my offering, or becoming expert in an unfamiliar space.

Despite having extraordinary mentors, access to networks, and people rooting for me at every turn, I still found myself doing the same things over and over. Good work, but not the right work. Drowning in insight, but starving for traction.

And then I had a realization, triggered by one smart question from someone I trust:

What’s one small step you can take right now to move toward higher-value work?

That single, simple, non-threatening thought gave me clarity. Confidence. A small movement forward that got me looking forward to the next step forward. It felt like a flashlight in the fog.

The Real Reason Execution Fails

Most execution doesn’t fail because founders are lazy, undisciplined, or uncommitted. It fails because they’re overwhelmed. Confronted by a wall of fog, they sit down and wait, hoping the path will reveal itself.

And it never does.

Here’s what I see, over and over:

  • The engineer-founder who avoids marketing by endlessly refining the product.
  • The visionary who talks strategy but avoids the hard work of follow-up.
  • The founder who hires a growth lead, then hands them an empty map.

They all suffer from the same root cause: I call it a comfort zone bias.

They retreat to what they know, not what the business needs. They confuse activity with progress. They mistake effort for execution.

The Lie: “I Just Need to Try Harder”

Trying harder is not a strategy.

Execution is not about brute force. It’s about clarity.

You don’t need to climb the whole mountain today. You need to find one clear foothold. One forward step. One win that builds your confidence, and shifts your identity. As long as it points uphill, you can rest assured you’re climbing the mountain.

James Clear writes in Atomic Habits that systems beat goals, and that identity-based habits drive real change. In simple english, that means you don’t become a marketer by declaring yourself a marketer. You become one by doing something a marketer does – today, tomorrow, the day after. Small steps. Repeated consistently. That’s how identity shifts.

The Flashlight in the Fog

Here’s the metaphor that changed everything for me:

Imagine standing in a fog-covered field. You can’t see more than a few feet ahead. The vastness feels paralyzing. But then you shine a flashlight straight down. You can see just enough of the path in front of you to take a single, safe step. And then another. And another.

That’s how real execution works.

Not with a massive playbook. Not with a sweeping strategy deck.

But with small, clear, confident steps. Taken daily.

Start With a Minimum Viable Roadmap

Forget the 47-step execution plan. Instead, build what I call a Minimum Viable Roadmap:

  1. One clear objective (e.g. get your first 5 customers to take a call, or build a nurture sequence that delivers useful information to a prospect for the next week or so).
  2. Make it the smallest next step you can take today.
  3. A short string of steps after that – low-friction, confidence-building, and easy to achieve.

The point isn’t perfection. It’s about doing something that builds confidence without being too hard. Which makes you feel like doing more. Which, without you noticing it, turns into forward motion.

That’s traction. And traction compounds.

So, What’s Your First Step?

If you’re overwhelmed by growth tasks, or marketing, or building your outbound engine – don’t build a roadmap.

Take one small step.

Follow up with that investor. Send a short email to that almost-client. Review your last 10 deals and find the pattern.

Shine the light down. Then move.

That’s how you build momentum. That’s how you create clarity. That’s how you scale.

One step at a time.