I went to Iceland with my now-wife and then-girlfriend back in 2019. Our goal was to hike our way around the country - there’s a loop most tourists follow that hits waterfalls, black sand beaches, glaciers, volcanic fields, and this wild moss that makes you feel like you’re on another planet. We rented a car and did it. Highly recommend.

At our very first stop, we jumped out and were a bit discouraged. The waterfall was amazing, but it was swarmed with people and cars and tour buses. Luckily, one of our guidebooks had predicted this. Every stop will be packed, it said, but every stop also has a trail. Find the trail and it’ll bring you to another waterfall or beach or volcanic field a mile or two away.

So, we did. After about 250 yards on the hike at our first waterfall, the crowd went from thousands to maybe a dozen. A mile into the hike, we were completely alone, looking at a waterfall objectively more beautiful than the one by the road.

This happened at every stop. We didn’t even bother looking at the “main” attraction by the end.

The tourists blew me away. Iceland is a 6 hour flight from everywhere. Basically everyone there had planned this trip, flown across an ocean, rented a car, drove to the site, then… stopped. All they had to do was walk for 20 more minutes to get the ultimate prize.

This is an entrepreneur specialty. I think of it as the “85% Principle.”

Most entrepreneurs get 85% of the way to something interesting, then stop. You put an enormous amount of physical and emotional effort pulling together an email list, crafting a cold email with a CTA, getting the landing page perfect to back it up, sending a personalized version to 250 people… then… you don’t send any follow up emails. Even though you know that 95% of responses we get come after email 3.

You spend 25 hours on a blog post then 30 seconds on a LinkedIn post and hope people just… find it.

The really good stuff comes from finishing off the last 15%.

What are you 85% of the way to?