(Short post today, but I felt inspired at how helpful it is to actually write or model things yourself!)
Everyone wants to help.
Investors, advisors, vendors—they’ll send you a template.
“This is how we do it at [insert hot company here].”
And look—templates aren’t bad.
They give you structure.
They show you what “good” looks like.
They’re useful as a reference point.
But they can also make your thinking lazy.
Because the real value of a model isn’t the output.
It’s the process of building it.
Spreadsheeting is like writing.
You don’t do it because the words magically appear well-formed.
You do it because it forces you to think.
To clarify. To challenge your assumptions.
To connect the dots between what you think drives the business—and what actually does.
So yes, use the template. Peek at the structure. Steal what’s helpful.
But then open a blank workbook.
Start from scratch.
Lay out how traffic becomes leads, how leads become pipeline, how pipeline turns into revenue—and how that revenue expands, contracts, or churns.
Link it all together. Force yourself to write the formulas.
It’s in that process that you engrain your understanding of the business.
And that’s the point.