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 - Self Awareness
🔨 Tool - Atoms
🍿Consume - How to Validate your B2B business idea
📖Concept - The Decoy Effect

Latest Podcast Episode

Today’s guest is Arshad Chowdhury.

Arshad is a partner at Betatron Venture Group, a VC fund investing in early-stage B2B companies across Asia. We chat about Betatron's investment thesis and Arshad's experience in running and starting businesses.

In the episode, we discuss:

• His investment thesis
• What it takes to be a founder
• His scrappy startup stories
• Valuable lessons learned
• De-risking starting a business
• The importance of health
And so much more...

You can check out the episode here.

Perspective

Self Awareness

If you’re not self-aware, how do you know you aren’t?

I find this question fascinating, because I’m sure most of us consider ourselves to be self-aware, but how do we know that we are?

We’re the main character of our story and so our self-perception could be way off of how others perceive us.

I think it’s important to take some time to reflect on how others perceive, you because the last thing you want is to be perceived more negatively than how you perceive yourself.

Claire Hughes Johnson proposes that you ask yourself some questions to determine whether you lack self-awareness.

Do you often get feedback that you don't agree with?

If the answer is yes, it's likely that others see you differently from how you see yourself.

Do you feel drained at the end of the workday, and you're not sure why? 

It can be draining if people don’t understand where you’re coming from or how to efficiently work with you.

Do you have trouble saying what types of work you do enjoy, and what types you don't?

This one is important and we all should be able to answer it. If you don’t understand yourself and how you work best, how do you expect others to?

Do you consider yourself self-aware?

It’s important to reflect from time to time to gauge whether everyone is on the same page.

Tool

Atoms

This new app has got mixed reviews.

But I thought I’d shout it out because of how much of an impact the book had on my life.

Atoms is an app to help you build habits.

It was created by the author of Atomic Habits, James Clear.

We all need to build habits in our life and I’m sure many of you have seen how beneficial habits can be.

By applying many of his teachings in the book to my life, I picked up many beneficial habits.

This app is intended to apply those lessons to your life by holding you accountable.

Making it even easier for people to pick up new habits.

The only problem with the app at the moment is that it’s consider quite pricy for what you get.

Of course they plan on building out the features as they go and with his reputation attached, I’m sure Clear will make sure it works.

The other thing was the free version seems a little too limited with tracking for only one habit at a time.

That’s all I know about it at the moment.

But I’d swear by the book, so I’m sure this is just the early stages of a great app.

You can check it out here. It’s only on Apple at the moment.

Consume (Read / Watch / Listen)

How to Validate your B2B business idea

I stumbled across one of the best newsletters in a while.

It’s written by Lenny Rachitsky and it covers all things business.

This particular post is about validating your business idea and he goes into great detail.

This post is the second of a series, but I feel like idea validation is so important for early-stage entrepreneurs.

Particularly those doing it for the first time.

The are the overall steps and the link below is for step 2:

Part 1: How to come up with a great B2B startup idea

Part 2: How to validate your idea ← This post

Part 3: How to identify your ICP

Part 4: How to find and win your first 10 customers

Part 5: How to find product-market fit

Part 6: How, and when, to hire your early team

Part 7: How to scale your growth engine

You can see how much value is packed into this newsletter, so check it out here.

Let me know what you think.

Concept

The Decoy Effect

The Decoy Effect is very similar to the price anchoring approach I’ve spoken of before.

The basic idea is that when a consumer has to decide between two options, you add in a third less attractive option (the decoy) to get them to pick one of the options.

The decoy is usually greatly inferior to the target option, but partially inferior to the other option.

This can be done in many ways.

An example. of this can be all-inclusive holiday packages.

If there are two options in two different cities, both at 4-star hotels, at very similar prices, it’s difficult to choose between them.

If you have a deal with the French hotel, where you are making more profit on that package, you want to entice a customer to pick that one.

So you create a third package at a 3-star French hotel, that’s quite expensive in comparison.

Suddenly you have made their choice easier because the French 4-star package looks like a great deal.

We forget how easily manipulated we are and this is a common marketing tactic.

Next time you see pricing packages question whether they’re directing you to an option.

Or hey, use it for your next product or service.

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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