Kyle Racki

@JamesClear Absolutely. People underestimate how long it will take. But also don’t let decision fatigue slow you down from starting the climb. If it’s the wrong mountain, get off it.

You don't need to worry about progressing slowly. You need to worry about climbing the wrong mountain.

To all the people who have poured their energy into serving our customers over the years, I thank you. To all our customers - you're the reason we are here - and I won't stop trying my best to deliver on our mission to make every deal a closed deal. To the next 10 years!

Proposify officially turns 10 years old. 🥳🎊🎈🎂 According to Inc, 96% of companies will fail within the first ten years, so we’re in the 4% club. Here are ten lessons I learned in ten years building Proposify (a quarter of my life!)

10. It is a marathon, not a sprint. Some startups sell within the first year or two or three. That's ok if that's what they want. But to build a real business, you have to think in years and decades. The grass isn't necessarily greener in another business.

9. You're only as good as your executive team. If a department isn't functioning, it's only the executive who has the power to fix it. Work with them, help them figure it out, but if they aren't making meaningful changes in a 90 day window they just never will.

8. Delegate, but don't delegate too much. As you get more money you'll be able to buy back more time. This is great. But remove yourself too much and you'll get bored, lose touch with the people executing, and dull your skills. Work within your zone of genius.

7. Never stop talking to your customers. You'll be tempted to stop once the business is humming and you want more time back, but it will bite you eventually. It's the business version of brushing your teeth, stretching and exercising.

6. Pay back debt. Organizational, cultural, technical, financial. It all accrues debt over time and you'll pay interest on it years later. Regularly sort, sequence, and priorities organizational issues and allocate time and resources to fix them.

5. Build the muscle for tough conversations. When you're disappointed, let the person know, whether they report to you or not. Encourage them to do the same. Setting low expectations or burying your head in the sand only hurts you in the long run.

4. Build a culture that attracts kind people. It has an impact on new employees who start when they feel warmth from everyone they meet. Values are built by what you reward and punish. Remove assholes accordingly.

3. Learn how to be a good manager. Yes, you can hire experienced managers, but a core CEO skill is to know how to run effective 1:1s, performance reviews, coaching plans, etc. You'll suck at first but keep working on it.

2. Strategy is saying no. Being all things to all people is the opposite of strategy. The few things you say yes to and the reason why IS your strategy.

1. You don't have to have a massive vision on day one. Focus on solving a big problem and let the market and the players inform your bigger vision.

@anon_opin There isn’t a lack of originality because of a lack of ideas. It’s because studios hate risk. Remakes, sequels and well-known IP are less risky. There are original low-budget movies being made right now but often they fail to make money.

Dear film makers. There has NEVER in the history of humankind been a remake that was better than the original. Sit down and read some indie author books from people who have great, unique ideas and no money to get them recognised.

@ClubSundayMusic Released a new single, Show and Tell + Magic Machine. @NewMusicKarl would love to have you review it 🙏🏼 open.spotify.com/album/10zJbJVj…

*Big Launch Day* 🚀 Today we just launched the 2024 edition of The State of Proposals. My team and I analyzed 1,362,916 proposals made over the last year, representing 42,295 companies across 27 industries, and $2,811,449,004 in sales. Just go to proposify dot com / sop

You'd be surprised at how many mid-market companies are stuck between: a) Marketing creates all the proposals, making them the bottleneck b) Sales sending proposals, often without the pre-made templates, up-to-date content library, or skills required to make a great proposal.

Systems > Hacks Hacks are overrated. As your business grows you need to rely less on hacks and more on systems for growth.

Mediocre executives spend most of their time talking about how hard they’re working and generating incremental results. Great executives spend their time working with their teams and generating exponential results.

One of the most valuable internal emails I get every week is from Scott Tower, director of sales at @proposify If you're an executive reporting to a CEO, sharing updates even if there isn't a major win - especially so - will build more trust than you know.