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 - Asking
🔨 Tool - Brilliant
🍿Consume - How To Start
📖Concept - The Perfect Pitch

Latest Podcast Episode

Today’s guest is Niall Cleaver.

Niall is the founder of Cupsly. Cupsly is Britain's luxury coffee brand and their first product is a reusable coffee cup. The business is about to launch its first product and we discuss everything Niall has learned so far.

In the episode, we discuss:

• How Niall had the idea for Cupsly
• The benefits of building in public
• What Cupsly will become
• Mindset around the unknown
• Slow is sometimes the fastest growth
• Finding the right team
And so much more...

You can check out the episode here.

Perspective

Asking

Most of what I speak about today comes from the Diary of a CEO episode in today’s content section.

The topic of asking is a big focus of the discussion.

If you haven’t been flexing your ask muscle, you’re probably pretty bad at asking for things.

Most of us are.

But growth, sales, opportunity, and connections are all on the other side of enough asks.

Most successful people attribute they’re success to opportunities that came their way because they asked for it.

And I don’t mean they asked one person and the opportunity came their way. I mean they asked thousands of people, over and over again. And eventually, someone said yes.

Asking is hard and first. It feels like you’re being a burden are hassling someone.

But if you don’t ask, you won’t receive and it’s up to them to decide what to do with that ask.

Not you to assume how they will respond and decide not to do it in the first place.

The most important tip from the episode about asking was to make you have with or without you energy.

That’s the perfect ask.

If you approach someone with the confidence that this project/business/opportunity is going to happen whether they’re in board or not, their fomo kicks in and they want to be a part of it.

If you know it will happen then they can be confident it will too.

If you require them to be a part of it for it to work, then that’s too much pressure and it’s barely your project then.

So remember that when you create your ask or offer.

Have with or without you energy and those thousands of emails could lead to a completely different life direction.

Tool

Brilliant

Today’s tool is slightly different to the ones I usually speak about.

This one is physical.

The team at Brilliant have created a pair of glasses that enable you to interact with your environment.

They're slightly different to the Apple Vision Pros in the sense that this is more an enhancement of reality rather than augmented reality.

The glasses are voice activated and assist you in navigating your surroundings.

For example, you can look at a building and ask your glasses its history, or you can look at a foreign sign and ask them to translate it.

They're completely open source, which is usually where we see the most progress, so I'd keep an eye on these.

I feel like we're going to see use cases and similar tools converge over the next few years.

In this space, we have the Meta glasses which are more content-focused, these which are more internet assistant-focused and AR which is more like a phone or computer attached to your face.

Many form factors and use cases are going to be tested and we don't really know who the winner will be.

These are open for preorder if you think they're cool.

Consume (Read / Watch / Listen)

How to Start

This is an episode that I’m going to recommend for a long time.

It’s perfectly in line with what this newsletter is about.

Daniel Priestley speaks about how to start and how it’s easier than you think.

He unpacks how you should test an idea to validate it and the potential of asking for things.

Most people lack self-confidence or use the excuse that they aren’t ready to start. But this episode helps call people out on those things.

It’s an episode I’m going to listen to over and over again to ensure that all of it sinks in.

If you’re motivated to start a business, but have fears or don’t know where to start then give this episode a listen.

I’d love to hear what you think and have a conversation about it.

Concept

The Perfect Pitch

Another pearl of wisdom from the above episode is how to deliver the perfect pitch.

The CAPSTONE acronym makes it easy to remember the order and elements of the perfect pitch.

Let's unpack them:

C- Clarity - you don’t want to confuse people. This may seem obvious, but being so close to a project or new business, you forget that some of the less obvious things are only clear to you. Try to remain objective.

A- Authority - ability to communicate that you're worth listening to. Why should these investors listen to you? What gives you the authority that you’re the right person to solve this problem?

P- Problem - define the problem. Make it clear that this is a problem worth solving.

S- Solution - provide a solution. How are you going to solve it? Why is this a good solution and what gives you the edge to solve it this way?

T- The why - communicate why you care enough about this and that you're the person to drive it forward. Why does this matter to you? Why this problem?

O- Opportunity, define the opportunity and explain why anyone should get involved. Investors are looking to make money, that’s the truth. So, you should communicate clearly why this is a worthwhile investment for them.

N- Next steps, this is pretty straightforward but indicates that you’ve planned. You have a timeline, based on certain metrics and milestones and the proposed outcome if you reach all of them.

E- Essence and emotions - what is the emotional feeling you want people to think about? Many pitches miss the opportunity to end on an emotional note. This is the last feeling you leave the investors with. They remember how a pitch made them feel and if you end on something like the next steps the pitch can fall flat and prevent you from standing out.

If you keep all of these in mind when putting together your next pitch, it should increase your odds of investment.

The idea has obviously got to be good, but this is a great way to remember to cover everything.

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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