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 - Your experience, your choice
🔨 Tool - Beehiiv
🍿Consume - The importance of intonation
📖Concept - Learning Pyramid

Latest Podcast Episode

Today’s guest is Heléne Smuts.

Heléne is the founder of Credo Growth and a Board Member of the Entrepreneurs Organization (EO) Accelerator program. Credo Growth is a growth consultancy that empowers entrepreneurs and business leaders to grow their technology companies. Not only do we talk about Credo Growth and EO, but many more projects and Heléne's book!

In the episode, we discuss:

• What Credo Growth does
• What drew Heléne to coaching
• Junior to Giants
• Bootcamp to Boardroom
• The benefits of community and EO
• Heléne's book - Ditch Mediocrity: Learn How to Take Your Team Performance from Average to Incredible
And so much more...

You can check out the episode here.

Perspective

“Your experience of life is your choice” - Sadhguru

If you haven’t come across Sadhguru before I’d suggest checking him out.

His own content might be a lot to take in at first, so I’d recommend listening to podcasts and YouTube videos where he has a conversation with someone.

He has some great views on life, the purpose of it, and happiness.

They’re interesting perspectives that can take some time and thought to get your head around.

I see many overlaps with things Stoicism.

The quote above is one of those instances and something I tell myself almost every day.

It’s completely my choice to decide how I experience life. Yes, some things may affect my mood and change my current state, but it’s up to me to decide what impact anything has on me.

It took me a while to understand this and a lot of practice to actually believe it.

I enjoy discussions around this topic, so if you believe otherwise please don’t hesitate to reply to this email.

This is a reminder to me and anyone else who needs to hear it. You’re in control of how you feel.

I’ll leave you with another quote by Sadhguru, which is kind of an extension of the first one.

Tool

Beehiiv

Here’s another one of these tools that I’m so close to and use almost every day, that I forgot to mention.

Beehiiv is the newsletter platform that I use to deliver these weekly newsletters to you inbox.

What I love about it is how easy it is to get started and send out your first newsletter.

If you’re thinking about starting a newsletter, I couldn’t recommend it enough.

You can create templates to speed up your workflow and it has all the tools you need to create and grow your newsletter.

The free plan allows you to have up to 2500 subscribers and then you’ll need to start paying. But you don’t just pay for hosting, you also pay for tools to grow and promote your newsletter.

They’re constantly thinking of new ways to help creators reach new audiences and track their progress.

It’s so intuitive and easy to use.

If you thinking about it, I’d be happy to answer any questions you may have about it.

Consume (Read / Watch / Listen)

@in_my_mind777

How you present yourself and your ideas even if you've got nothing to say… Your intonation counts. How to use Intonation. #WillStephens ... See more

The importance of intonation

I loved this video.

It shows the power of intonation when we speak.

It showed me that intonation is just as important as the subject matter we’re speaking about.

I couldn’t believe how he captivated the audience and held their attention without saying anything.

A video like this makes me think of two things.

First, speaking is a skill and it takes a lot of work to get very good at speaking publicly.

Second, I have a long way to go.

I started my podcast to get better at speaking, but it feels like I’m on level one and the level of the speaking above is the ultimate boss.

Did you find the video as captivating as me?

Concept

Learning Pyramid

This is the learning pyramid.

It’s something I refer to often when I learn something new.

It’s so important to be reminded of this because we often tell ourselves that we’ve sufficiently learned something by just reading or listening to something.

It may feel like you’ve learned it, but as you can see the true test is teaching someone else.

You’ll quickly realise that you actually have no idea what they said in the podcast or what that theory really is.

I try to incorporate these elements or steps into my day to day to help me retain the things I’ve learned.

We consume a ridiculous amount of content so I don’t blame you if you aren’t retaining anything.

It’s also not important to retain everything, it’s important to pick out the bits that resonate and focus on learning them.

To listen and read you can listen to the audio book and read the physical book at the same time.

To discuss or demonstrate, bring it up in conversation and try to explain the point of view or learnings.

To apply or teach, start that project you just watched a tutorial on or start a YouTube channel or newsletter and try to teach others.

That’s my thought process behind the newsletter and it’s helped me drastically when I consume content through that lens.

Pin the pyramid above your desk. Let’s retain those important bits!

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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