Another Excuse Newsletter

Happy New Year!

Welcome back to the first Another Excuse Newsletter of 2024. It isn’t just another excuse, but a reason to start that thing you’ve been putting off.

What to expect this week:
👓Perspective - Take the risk, close the loop
🔨 Tool - Staf.ai 
🍿Consume - First hundred customers
📖Concept - Hedgehog Concept

Latest Podcast Episode

I’ve delayed the podcast by a day this week because I wanted to record the solo episode.

Once it’s live, you can check out the episode here.

Perspective

Take the risk, close the loop

We all have that one thing that could have been.

That one idea, career path or venture that we seriously considered, but never took action on.

And now it’s become something we regret or wonder about from time to time.

What would have happened?

What would my life be like?

There’s a way to get rid of those unanswered questions and I think you already know the answer.

It’s by trying the thing.

Committing to it for 6 months and then deciding whether you actually want to continue to pursue it or not.

No matter what it is, if you give it a good go, you will have peace of mind that it is either for you or it isn’t.

There won’t be any unanswered questions.

We usually play up regrets and hypotheticals in our heads to be way bigger or exaggerated than they really are.

So if we know for sure, then we don’t make ourselves feel shitty and we’re more certain of the path we’re on.

Failing is part of it.

Just give it all a go.

Tool

Staf.ai 

It’s still early days, but this is the future.

This site is a database of all the useful AI agents that you could use.

An AI agent is basically an assistant that can help you perform specific tasks.

So, for example, there’s an agent on this list that will help organise your calendar, store all of your screenshots in one place and turn them into reminders.

Another can make sales calls on your behalf, or even create an app for you with just text input.

There’s no harm in getting to know how some of these work and trying them out.

If even one of them fits into your routine and improves the way you do things it could increase your output drastically.

It’s worth a shot.

I think we’re going to be using many agents to complete many different tasks.

I even wonder whether we’re going to be the ones communicating with each other by email soon, or our AI assistant is just going to do it for us and then populate our calendars and to-do lists.

Who knows?

But there’s no harm in staying on top of it rather than being surprised by it.

Consume (Read / Watch / Listen)

First hundred customers

This has been one of their most practical episodes yet.

If you’ve started a business or even considered starting one, one of the biggest questions asked is: “How do we get customers?”

This question alone has discouraged people from starting or it’s been the hurdle that many can’t overcome.

If you don’t have customers then you don’t have a product that anyone wants.

In this episode, Sam and Shaan explain how they got their first 100 customers for the different businesses they started.

Throughout each stage of their career, there’s one common thread, they just did it.

They thought outside of the box, but they also just asked people.

They decided on the best pond to fish in and then went fishing again and again.

The ability to sell is the ability to accept no for an answer.

Sales becomes a numbers game and you know that X amount of No’s leads to a Yes.

That’s what I’m working on this year. Hearing no.

Concept

Hedgehog Concept

The Hedgehog Concept is a concept developed by author Jim Collins and his book Good to Great.

The idea is simple. It’s all about figuring out your purpose in life by finding three areas or circles of your life that overlap.

Those three circles are:

1. What are you deeply passionate about?

2. What you can be the best in the world at

3. What drives your economic or resource engine

It’s about figuring out what you can be the best while making a good living from it. If you figure that out, it will never feel like work.

It’s about understanding your realistic potential of what you can actually be the best at and ruling out everything you definitely can’t be the best at.

Just because you’re good at something and it pays you pretty well, doesn’t mean you could ever be the best at it.

These aren’t easy questions to answer and it takes time to figure them out. But once you do, you’ll know.

You’ll be surprised that you’re getting paid for it and it won’t feel like work. It will come naturally to you and your services will be in high demand.

There’s something like that for everyone. You’ve just got to find it.

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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