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 - You can’t read the same book twice
🔨 Tool - similarweb
🍿Consume - 10 AI Startup Ideas
📖Concept - Innovation accounting

Latest Podcast Episode

Today’s guest is Jan Parmentier.

Jan is the founder of Supernova Brands, an import and distribution company bringing products and brands to the South African market. We have an interesting discussion about how the company started and what he's learned along the way.

In the episode, we discuss:

• What Supernova Brands does
• How the company started
• Evaluating risk
• Being a mentor
• Filtering through the noise of automation
• The importance of decompressing
And so much more...

You can check out the episode here.

Perspective

You can’t read the same book twice

I heard this the other day and it completely changed my perspective on how I read books.

I used to have the view, that I needed to continue to consume more.

Once I’ve read a book, I’ve ticked it off the list and I can move on to the next.

But that’s not true.

At each stage of our lives, we have a completely different mindset and view of the world.

I’m sure there are a few books that completely changed your perspective, educated you, or even changed the course of your life.

I look back on these books as books that served a purpose. They were extremely useful, but I hadn’t considered reading them again.

But after hearing this, I’ve decided to go back and read the most influential books.

I used to write a blog where I spoke about some of these books, so it will be interesting to go back and see how my perspective has changed.

Do you read the same books?

What impact has it had on you?

Tool

similarweb

Similarweb is a tool that Sam Parr and Shaan Puri, the hosts of My First Million, swear by.

They constantly refer to the Chrome extension and how useful it is.

So basically how it works is, that you can visit any website and open the extension.

It will then provide you with a whole lot of information.

It will rank the website globally and locally based on the amount of traffic it receives.

It gives you the Bounce Rate, Pages per Visit, Monthly Visits and Avg. Visit Duration.

It also lets you know where people are from who visit this site and what marketing channels the traffic comes from.

This is an extremely useful tool when you are either an investor or a founder looking to start a new project.

You’re able to see whether a particular niche gets a lot of traffic and how they’re getting that traffic.

This type of info is extremely useful and could help you make a better-informed investment/business decision.

You get 15 free requests a month and if you’re doing a lot of research it's worth paying for.

You can get the Chrome extension here and try it yourself.

Consume (Read / Watch / Listen)

10 AI Startup Ideas

I spoke about them above. I guess this edition is dedicated to the My First Million Podcast.

Shaan and Sam are notoriously good at making predictions and determining where the market is going.

In this episode, Shaan breaks down why he thinks these ideas are good and gives his predictions on where this AI wave is going.

Their episodes are always packed with value, so if they aren’t a part of your weekly podcast roster, I suggest you add them.

Let me know what you think.

Concept

Innovation Accounting

I came across the term when reading The Lean Startup.

Innovation accounting is a reference to the shift in traditional accounting practices to prioritise value creation. It’s about capturing opportunities for growth and profitability through innovation.

It’s about tracking and measuring the financial impact. The impact that innovation, human capital, and intellectual capital have on the business.

It makes it easier to predict success and determine what affects the business.

Many businesses turn to vanity metrics and are happy as long as the number keeps going up.

But the number increasing doesn’t help determine what impact a particular decision had.

Can you break it down further to determine the exact impact a decision has and why something worked or didn’t?

Once you shift your focus to more meaningful metrics, you’re able to make progress and make decisions based on facts rather than assumptions.

Go deeper, and figure out why.

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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