Cold email, Reddit, LinkedIn, referrals: most first-customer advice is a menu of channels, and a menu can't tell you what to do on Tuesday. A calendar can. Week one is the list, week two is conversations, week three is the offer, week four is follow-up.

You will always feel you deserve a raise. That feeling tells you nothing. Check revenue trend, runway and margins instead. All three green, take it. One red, wait a quarter.

You'd know exactly what to tell a friend who had your problem. Say it to yourself and it goes soft. Researchers have a name for that gap, and a cheap way to close part of it: write about your day using your own name instead of "I."

"Yeah, I'd use that" is free to say. "Here's my card" is not. Only one of them tells you what to build.

"Do things that don't scale" gets you to customer ten. After that you have to choose which hand work to keep. A task you're good at feels like progress whether or not it's still teaching you anything.

Every hour spent posting about the product is an hour the product doesn't get. The first ten customers come from the product itself.

A company reportedly burned $500 million on AI in one month. No cap on licenses, agents calling agents, a token bill on every call. Before a task goes to AI, I want three answers: does it need my judgement, does the math pay, and what happens the day I stop.