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 - No Long Term Planning
🔨 Tool - Devin AI
🍿Consume - Acquiring Users
📖Concept - The Pyramid of Clarity

Latest Podcast Episode

This week’s guest is Stephen Dooley.

Stephen is the founder of Roamr. Roamr is a platform that enables businesses to offer global mobility as a perk to their employees. It's a house swap and meetup platform and we get into all the details in this episode.

In the episode, we discuss:

• How Roamr started
• What makes Roamr different to other platforms
• The three criteria for starting a business
• The importance of market research and how to do it
• Finding a co-founder
• Asking and perception of risk
And so much more...

You can check out the episode here.

Perspective

No Long Term Planning

No long term planning is a philosophy that Jason Fried lives by.

It's a philosophy that many would push back on.

He believes that long term planning is doing what you thought, not what you think.

Which makes sense.

You can't predict what the circumstances will be like in 5 years time.

And planning for that future reality means you act based on a whole lot of assumptions.

Acting now, acting on what you know can take you in many directions, but it's fast and proactive.

Jason has taken this approach throughout the lifetime of his businesses.

But I'm not sure if people have the self-control and awareness to work in such a short time frame. (He usually focuses on 6-week sprints)

Our nature is to coast at times, and take our foot off the gas.

But purely living in the now, making decisions in the now, is fast-paced and stressful.

I see this working in an ideal world, for very driven people, but is everyone capable of this?

I'm not sure.

What do you think?

Tool

Devin Ai

I had to speak about this.

Devin AI is a product development that has happened a lot sooner than people expected.

As you can see from the image above, it's a fully autonomous software engineer.

Software engineers have been one of the most sought-after employees for over a decade.

Their skills are some of the most highly leveraged, and they usually end up being co-founders in funded tech companies.

I don't see this as a complete replacement of engineers, but more of a way to leverage their skills.

I feel that at least one person in a business needs to know what's going on and what the AI is doing.

So more engineers can be spread out across more companies, meaning we could see a boom in new businesses with fewer employees.

We're going to see more and more revolutionary tools spring up.

They're going to change the way we do work and what resources are necessary to run a successful business.

If you have development knowledge, check it out.

Consume (Read / Watch / Listen)

@myfirstmilpod

The Strategy That Landed 100,000 Users #business #strategy #financegoals

Acquiring Users

Many people think users just happen over time.

But that's not true.

You've got to find out where your ideal customer hangs out, what content they consume, and strategically go after them.

Sam gives a great example here of how he got his first 100000 users for one of his companies.

He looked at the metrics and thought strategically.

Many would look at just traffic and assume that it wasn’t a good strategy. But with such high click-through rates, it was the perfect strategy for what he needed.

Virality in small, specific circles is exactly what they needed to grow.

So they tailored content to their ideal user.

There are so many examples like this.

So take a step back, don't do what everyone else is doing, and find that ideal user. Speak to them.

Concept

The Pyramid of Clarity

The Pyramid of Clarity was created to help businesses align their efforts to achieve their goals.

It’s very easy to get caught in the weeds without any clear actionable plans for where the business is heading.

So this pyramid created by Asana resolves this.

It’s a tool that aligns team members on the company's high-level purpose and expected tangible outcomes.

It’s a detailed illustration of the business’s long-term aspirations, supported by short-term goals. Its purpose is to guide product roadmaps and drive business plans.

In a nutshell, it gets everyone on the same page so you know which direction you’re heading in.

The illustration above is all you need to know.

There’s no point in me explaining it all as the image is very clear.

I think this is a great image to reference when setting up how you plan to achieve the business’s goals.

It provides clarity and ensures everyone is on the same page.

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]

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