Another Excuse Newsletter

Welcome back to the Another Excuse Newsletter. It isn’t just another excuse, but a reason to start that thing you’ve been putting off.

What to expect this week:
👓Perspective - Burn the Boat
🔨 Tool - Opal
🍿Consume - Codie’s Coaching Lessons
📖Concept - 5 Why’s Workshop

Latest Podcast Episode

Today’s guest is Daniel Harding.

Dan is the Founder and Chairman of Sonorous Group. Sonorous is a London-based holding company, driving growth for innovative global enterprises.

In the episode, we discuss:

• How his entrepreneurial journey started
• Why operations are so important
• How businesses scale
• Whether you need a good idea to start a business
• What he looks for in founder
• What he learned from scaling a business to exit
And so much more...

You can check out the episode here.

Perspective

Burn the Boat

Another version of this phrase is to burn the bridge.

Have you heard of it?

It refers to starting something and not turning back because it's not an option.

Sometimes people strategically put themselves in this situation and others are forced into it.

Either way, they usually come out the other side better for it.

It's a way to force yourself into doing something when you'd otherwise give it a second thought.

I try to burn the boat as often as I can.

For my podcast, by publicly saying I was going to publish an episode every week, I burnt the boat of turning back. If I didn't tell anyone I could have created multiple episodes and then stopped and no one would have known.

Others have been forced into entrepreneurship because they had no choice.

They had no money or no one would hire them.

There was no second option and so they made it work.

If there's something you're considering and you've been putting it off, find a way to burn the boat.

Force yourself to start and remove all ways of turning back.

Tool

Opal

Focus has become such a necessity, that people are paying to keep themselves from getting distracted.

Opal is an app with a free and paid subscription version to prevent distractions.

It gives you focus reports where you can compare yourself to others and track your progress.

It gives you a focus score and lets you block all of the apps that get the better of you.

You can put time limits on apps and it gamifies the whole thing by setting milestones.

Basically, it's an app to save you from yourself.

We're bombarded with information and notifications these days and we don't have the self-control to check our phones when we want to.

It's quite sad, to be honest, but the company is doing well and people are paying to use it.

Which shows that we have zero self control.

So, if you are one of those people check it out.

Consume (Read / Watch / Listen)

Codie’s Coaching Lessons

Another great piece of content by Codie Sanchez.

To make sure people check out the post I’m not going to give too much away.

Here are the lessons Codie has learned from $120k worth of coaching:

1. Focus will unf*ck you

2. Who not how

3. Niche experts = big returns

4. Don’t just set goals, set sacrifices

5. The upside/downside matrix

6. The “someday maybe” list

7. Be happy with the backseat

8. Be easy to find, hard to reach

Check out the post for a bit more of an explanation, but I’m sure you get the idea.

These 8 points can act as a great reminder when you’re too in the weeds and feeling overwhelmed.

Concept

5 Why’s Workshop

I first came across this concept in the book, The Lean Startup.

And yes, it’s as easy and straightforward as it sounds.

Ask the question “why?” in a business context 5 times to get to the bottom of a problem.

By simply asking why to answer again and again, you begin to realize some things.

You first realize that you’ve been basing a lot of your decision-making on assumptions.

It also helps you understand the consequences of each decision you make.

By figuring out what the root cause of a problem is, you’re able to make better-informed decisions that impact the business positively.

It seems so simple, but it shows just how caught up in everything we can get.

The fact that we need to remind ourselves to ask the question “why?” 5 times says it all.

It also shows us that sometimes things are simpler than we think and to make progress and grow your business you should stick to the simple stuff.

We all tend to complicate things and become our own downfall.

So, ask why? Get to the bottom of your problems and come up with solutions.

Thanks for Reading

Now start something!

P.S. Feedback is welcome and needed! If you’d prefer to send me an email and not respond, you can do so here: [email protected]

Check out my socials below 👇