2024 was the year I went into my slump. We missed the revenue goals I'd set over a few consecutive months, and every lost deal took a bit of my confidence with it. The problem was that I'd turned those revenue targets into a scorecard for myself, but no matter how well I ran each deal, “close a deal every week” is an outcome I don’t fully control. I knew that, yet every miss felt like a personal failure. Losing confidence is a massive problem for a founder, and bleeds into many negative downstream effects, like no longer being able to make decisions under uncertainty. I knew I needed to change. So I changed what I counted as a personal win. Did I think through the next step on every deal that day? When I noticed a problem, did I say it right away instead of sitting on it? Did I ask the question that felt uncomfortable to ask? Those are yes/no questions, and the answer is entirely within my control. I gave myself a target: three yeses in a week, and I'd won the week, whether or not we closed anything. I gained my confidence back by focusing on the right inputs, not the outcomes.