The Kickoff Doc: Floor Goal, F-Yeah Goal, Anti-Goal
A one-page doc that replaces a single made-up target with a goal range plus the traps that would make you lose while winning.
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~days to results
- Steps
- 5
- Confidence
- 88%
Shaan Puri runs a one-page kickoff doc at the start of every company and every internal initiative. It opens with plain-English 'what are we trying to do here', then defines what winning looks like as a range rather than a point: a floor goal, which is the level below which he would be surprised and disappointed, and an 'F yeah' goal, the outcome that would have the team chest-bumping. Having both means the team shoots for the dream while understanding that anything above the floor is still a win. The doc then adds an anti-goal, a technique he took from Andrew Wilkinson: the understandable traps you could fall into while chasing the goal. His example is doubling revenue while profit goes to zero because you overspent on marketing, or doubling podcast downloads by chasing clickbait until you have sold your soul. He calls that losing while winning. The doc closes by asking what it would take to reach the floor and what it would take to reach the ceiling.
Origin
Built as a direct correction to Shaan's earlier habit of setting 3x and 5x goals in a spreadsheet with no math behind them; the anti-goal component was learned from Andrew Wilkinson.
Core principles
- 01A goal range beats a single number
- 02A win is a win, anything above the floor counts
- 03Name the trap before you fall into it
- 04Doubling revenue while profit goes to zero is losing while winning
- 05Plain English first, spreadsheets second
How to run it
- 1
Open with the plain-English purpose
Start the doc by answering 'what are we trying to do here' in ordinary language, before any numbers or spreadsheets enter the conversation.
Pro tip If you cannot say it in plain English, the initiative is not defined well enough to set goals for.
- 2
Set the floor goal
Define the level below which you would be surprised and a little disappointed. This is the minimum acceptable outcome, not the target.
Watch out Do not set the floor at a number you would actually be happy with, or you have just renamed your target.
- 3
Set the F-yeah goal
Define the outcome that would have everyone running around chest bumping and saying they cannot believe it happened. This is the ceiling of the range and the thing you actually shoot for.
- 4
Add an anti-goal
Write down the understandable traps you could fall into while trying to hit the goal: burning profit on marketing, working so hard you never see your kids, chasing clickbait for downloads. These are the ways you lose while winning.
Pro tip Ask specifically: what is easily justifiable in the moment that we would regret at the end of the year?
- 5
Work backwards from both targets
Ask what it would take to get to the floor and what it would take to get to the F-yeah goal. The gap between the two answers is your actual plan.
Pro tip Have the person who owns the goal answer this, not you.
In the wild
Shaan uses My First Million itself as the worked example. The obvious goal is to double downloads. The trap is spending every day gaming the algorithm, knocking on neighbours' doors to ask how they made their money, then pantsing them and putting a pie in their face. That tactic would probably hit the download number.
→ The anti-goal rules the tactic out in advance: it would work, but it would cost dignity and make the work unenjoyable, which is losing while winning.
The second illustration is a business that doubles revenue but sends profit to zero because it overspent on marketing to get there, or a founder who hits every number while waking up stressed out every day.
→ Both count as failures under the anti-goal test even though the headline goal was achieved.
Common mistakes
Setting the goal alone in a spreadsheet
Shaan describes inventing 3x and 5x targets by changing a three to a five in Excel with no math behind it, then telling the team to get after it. The people doing the work had no input and no belief in the number.
Writing the doc once and never looking at it again
He found that three months after a planning burst nobody could even recall the goal when asked. Without rituals that surface the numbers daily and weekly, the kickoff doc is theatre.
Skipping the anti-goal
Without a named trap, teams optimise the headline metric and destroy something unmeasured alongside it: margin, sanity, brand, or family time.
Is it for you?
Best for
Founders and team leads who set goals in a spreadsheet once and never look at them again
Not ideal for
Pre-product-market-fit solo operators who have no team and no baseline numbers to bound a range with
From the transcript
“It's a one-page doc that I fill out religiously”
“The floor goal is basically like, you know, if it was below this, I'd be surprised and I'd be a little disappointed.”
“The second thing I do is I set an anti-goal. Learned this from Andrew Wilkinson”
“So, I think anti-goals are really important.”
From the episode
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